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DAVIDCOPPERnELO 


RETOLD FOR CHILDREN/ BV 



ILLUSTRATED IW COLOURS/ 

FM B BLAIKIE 


PHILADELPHIA gEORQE W. JACOBS ^ CO. 
PUBLISHERS 




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CONTENTS 


ChHpi 

I. HIS HAPPY CHILDHOOD 


II. HIS VISIT TO YARMOUTH . 


III. STRANGERS IN THE^OLD HOME 


IV. TRAVELLING BY COACH . 

V. FIRST WEEKS AT SALEM HOUSE 

VI. J. STEERFORTH AND TRADDLES 

VII. SCHOOL LIFE . 

VIII. VISITORS FOR DAVID 

IX. JUST LIKE OLD TIMES 

X. A MEMORABLE BIRTHDAY 

XI. PEGGOTTY’S WEDDING 

XII. HE GOES OUT INTO THE WORLD 

XIII. THE DIFFICULTIES OF THE MICAWB 

XIV. DAVID MAKES A RESOLVE 

XV. HIS EVENTFUL JOURNEY . 

XVI. HOW MISS BETSEY RECEIVED HIM 

XVII. MISS TROTWOOD MAKES UP HER MIND 


ERS 


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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


Everybody that came to the house of a morning; read that he 

was to be taken care of, as he bit . . . Proatltplsce 

Page 

As they were moving away his mother ran out of the gate . 12 

He took a chop by the bone in one hand and a potato in the 
•other . ' . . . . . . .40 

Mr. Peggotty took two prodigious lobsters, and an enormous 

crab, and a large canvas bag of shrimps out of his pockets . 70 

David dined with Mr. Micawber in prison .... xx6 

David ran after him as fast as he could .... X26 

He ’d rush out of the shop after them and send them flying . 132 

They walked haughtily out of the cottage . . . .156 


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THE STORY OF DAVID COPPERFIELD 


CHAPTER I 
HIS HAPPY CHILDHOOD 

David Copperfield never knew his father, for he died 
before David was born ; but his young, beautiful 
mother, with her pretty hair, and soft, shining eyes, 
David never forgot. 

When he looked back into the hazy days of his baby- 
hood, she was the first person he remembered— his 
mother and Peggotty. 

Peggotty's eyes were black, and her cheeks and arms 
so red, that David wondered that the birds did not 
peck her in preference to apples. 

On the bright, windy March afternoon of the day 
that David was born, Mrs. Copperfield was sitting by 
the parlour fire, when, lifting her eyes to the window 
opposite, she saw a strange lady coming up the garden. 

Though she had never seen her before, the young 
widow felt positive that it was Miss Betsey Trotwood, 


A 


2 


DAVID COPPERFIELD 


her dead husband’s aunt, of whom he had often spoken. 
Her nephew had been a favourite of Miss Betsey’s, but 
she was very angry with him for having married such 
a young, girlish wife. * A wax doll,’ Miss Betsey called 
her, though she had never set eyes on her till this 
present afternoon. 

Instead of ringing the bell like any other visitor, she 
came and looked in at the window, pressing the end of 
her nose so close to the glass that it became quite flat 
and white with the pressure; and seeing the young, 
girlish figure in widow’s weeds, she beckoned to Mrs. 
Copperfield to come and open the door. 

‘ Mrs. David Copperfield, I think,* said Miss Betsey, 
looking her up and down. 

‘Yes,’ said Mrs. Copperfield faintly. 

‘ Miss Trotwood,’ said the visitor. ‘ You have heard 
of her, I dare say.’ 

Mrs. Copperfield said she had. 

‘Now you see her,’ said Miss Betsey, following her 
hostess into the parlour. 

Miss Betsey looked so formidable, and stared so 
hard, that poor Mrs. Copperfield began to cry. 

‘ Oh, tut, tut, tut,’ said Miss Betsey. ‘ Don’t do that I 
Come, come ! Take off your cap, child, and let me see 
you.’ 

Mrs. Copperfield was too much afraid to refuse, so 
she took off her widow’s cap, with such nervous hands 
that her hair, which was very beautiful, fell about her 
face. 


HIS HAPPY CHILDHOOD 3 

‘Why, bless my heart!* cried Miss Betsey, ‘you 
are a very baby 1 * 

Poor Mrs. Copperfield hung her head as if it were 
her fault, poor thing, that she looked so young; and 
while she sobbed and murmured that she was afraid 
she was but a childish widow, and would be but a 
childish mother if she lived, she fancied she felt Miss 
Betsey softly touch her hair; but when she looked 
up, the visitor was sitting with her feet on the fender, 
and her hands folded on her knee, frowning into the 
fire. 

‘ Have some tea,’ said Miss Betsey, seeing that the 
hostess looked faint ; * what do you call your servant ? ’ 

‘ Peggotty,’ said Mrs. Copperfield. 

‘ Peggotty 1 * repeated Miss Betsey indignantly. ‘ Do 
you mean to say that any human being has gone into a 
Christian church, and got herself named Peggotty ? * 

‘It’s her surname,* said Mrs. Copperfield faintly. 
‘ Mr. Copperfield called her by it, because her Christian 
name was the same as mine.* 

‘ Here I Peggotty 1 * cried Miss Betsey, opening the 
parlour door. ‘ Tea. Your mistress is a little unwell. 
Don’t dawdle.* 

Peggotty was coming along the passage with a 
candle, and stood amazed at the strange voice bawling 
out orders as if it belonged to the head of the house. 
Miss Betsey then shut the door again, and sat down 
as before, with her feet on the fender. 

'And was David good to you, child?’ asked Miss 


4 DAVID COPPERFIELD 

Betsey, after a short silence. ‘ Were you comfortable 
together ? * 

‘ We were very happy,’ was the answer. ‘ Mr. Copper- 
field was only too good to me.* 

Peggotty came in by and by with candles and the 
tea, and seeing how ill her young mistress looked, she 
conducted her to her room, sent for the doctor, and 
left the strange visitor sitting by herself in the parlour. 

David was born that evening ; and by and by, Mr. 
Chillip, the doctor, went into the parlour to speak to 
the strange guest. She had taken her bonnet off and 
had tied it, by the strings, over her left arm. 

‘ How is she ? ’ asked Miss Betsey abruptly, staring 
at the doctor, who was a very little man, in such a stern 
way that it made him nervous. 

‘ Well, ma’am, she will soon be quite comfortable, I 
hope,’ returned Mr. Chillip mildly, ‘ quite as comfort- 
able as we can expect a young mother to be. There 
cannot be any objection to your seeing her presently, 
ma’am. It may do her good.’ 

‘ And she. How is she? * said Miss Betsey sharply. 

Mr. Chillip laid his head a little on one side, and 
looked at Miss Trotwood like an amiable bird. 

‘ The baby,’ said Miss Betsey. ‘ How is she ? ’ 

‘ Ma’am,’ returned Mr. Chillip, ‘ I apprehended you 
had known. It ’s a boy.’ 

Miss Trotwood said never a word, but took her 
bonnet by the strings, in the manner of a sling, aimed 
a blow at Mr. Chillip’s head with it, put it on bent, 


HIS HAPPY CHILDHOOD 5 

walked out, and never came back. She was so dis- 
appointed that the baby was a boy. 

Oh I those were beautiful days, the first years of 
David’s childhood. And they were happy and merry 
always— he and the young, pretty mother, and faithful 
Peggotty. 

Peggotty’s kitchen opened out into a back yard ; with 
a pigeon-house on a pole in the centre, without any 
pigeons in it, and a great dog-kennel in a corner, with- 
out any dog, and a number of hens and a cock that got 
upon a post to crow. 

And there was a garden where he played, where ripe 
fruit clustered on the trees in the warm summer-time ; 
and at the bottom of the garden there were tall elm 
trees, bending to one another in the breeze like giants 
whispering secrets, with ragged rooks’ nests hanging 
on the topmost branches, that the birds had deserted 
long ago. 

In the winter-time he played about the parlour, and 
learned his little lessons at his mother’s knee, and 
danced with her in the firelight when the lessons were 
all done— a beautiful, happy time I 

Peggotty and he were sitting one night by the parlour 
fire alone, for Mrs. Copperfield had gone out to a 
neighbour’s to spend the evening, and as a great treat 
David was to sit up until his mother came home. He 
had been reading about crocodiles, but was tired now. 


6 DAVID COPPERFIELD 

and very sleepy, though he would not have owned that 
for the world, of course. 

‘Peggotty,’ said he suddenly, ‘were you ever 
married ? ’ 

‘Lawk, Master Davy,* replied Peggotty. ‘What’s 
put marriage into your head ? * 

‘ But were you ever married, Peggotty? You are a 
very handsome woman, an’t you ? ’ 

‘Me handsome, Davy! Lawk, no, my dear! But 
what put marriage into your head ? * 

‘ I don’t know I You mustn’t marry more than one 
person at a time, may you, Peggotty ?* 

‘ Certainly not,’ said Peggotty. 

‘ But if you marry a person, and the person dies, why 
then, you may marry another person, mayn’t you, 
Peggotty?’ 

‘You may,’ said Peggotty, ‘if you chose. And she 
looked curiously at David. 

‘ You an’t cross, I suppose, Peggotty, are you I ’ said 
David ; because he really thought she was ; for she had 
spoken rather shortly. 

For answer, Peggotty laid aside the stocking she was 
knitting, and opening her arms wide, took the curly 
head within them, and gave it a good squeeze. 

‘ Now let me hear some more about the Crorkindills,* 
said Peggotty, ‘for I an’t heard half enough.* She 
looked very much moved, and David wondered why she 
looked so queer ; but he went on reading again until 
the garden bell rang. 


HIS HAPPY CHILDHOOD 7 

They went out to the door together, and there was 
David’s mother looking unusually pretty, and with her 
a gentleman with beautifully black hair and whiskers, 
who had walked home with them from church last 
Sunday. Mrs. Copperfield stooped down to take 
David in her arms and kiss him, and the gentleman 
said that he was a more highly privileged little fellow 
than a monarch. 

‘What does that mean?’ asked David over her 
shoulder. 

The gentleman only patted his head ; but David did 
not like him, somehow, and tried to put away his hand. 

‘ O Davy 1 ’ remonstrated Mrs. Copperfield. 

‘ Dear boy I ’ said the gentleman. ‘ I cannot wonder 
at his devotion.’ 

A beautiful blush stole into Mrs. Copperfield’s face. 
She gently chid David for being rude; but pressed 
him close to her as she thanked her companion for 
having seen her home. 

‘Let us say “good night,” my fine boy,* said the 
gentleman, when he had bent his head over the 
mother’s little hand. 

‘ Good night,’ said David. 

‘ Come I Let us be the best of friends in the world,’ 
said he, laughing. ‘ Shake hands ! ’ 

David’s right hand was in his mother’s left, so he 
gave him the other. 

‘Why, that’s the wrong hand, Davy,’ laughed the 
gentleman. 


8 


DAVID COPPERFIELD 


Mrs. Copperfield drew his right hand forward ; but 
David didn’t like him, and would not give it, but 
persisted in offering the left. But the gentleman 
shook it heartily, and called him a brave fellow, and 
went away: and as he went he turned round in the 
garden, and gave them a last look out of his deep 
black eyes, before the door was shut. 

Peggotty, who had not said a word, bolted and 
locked the door, and they all went into the parlour. 

‘ Hope you Ve had a pleasant evening, ma’am,* said 
Peggotty, standing as stiff as a barrel in the middle of 
the room, with a candlestick in her hand. 

Mrs. Copperfield answered cheerfully that she had 
had a very pleasant evening. 

‘A stranger or so makes an agreeable change,* 
suggested Peggotty. 

‘A very agreeable change indeed,* returned Mrs. 
Copperfield. 

David was half asleep ; but he had an uncomfortable 
feeling that Peggotty was finding fault with his 
mother, and that his mother was trying to excuse 
herself, and was crying; and then Peggotty burst 
out crying herself, and David woke up and cried 
too, and they all cried together. 

But the Sunday after that the gentleman walked 
home with them from church again, and David knew 
that Peggotty didn’t like him any more than he did; 
but that didn’t prevent Mr. Murdstone from walking 
home with them again. And his mother wore in turn 


HIS HAPPY CHILDHOOD 9 

all the prettiest dresses she had in her drawers, and 
went to visit at that neighbour’s very, very often. 

One autumn morning, when David was about eight 
years old and was with his mother in the front garden, 
Mr. Murdstone came by on horseback, and, reining 
up his horse, said he was going to Lowestoft to see 
some friends who were there with a yacht, and pro- 
posed to take David on the saddle before him, if he 
would like a ride. 

The air was so clear and pleasant, and the horse 
seemed to like the idea of a ride so much himself, as 
he stood snorting and pawing at the garden gate, 
that David had a great desire to go. So he was sent 
upstairs to Peggotty to be made spruce; and in the 
meantime Mr. Murdstone dismounted, and with his 
horse’s bridle drawn over his arm, walked slowly up 
and down on the outer side of the sweetbriar fence, 
while Mrs. Copperfield walked on the inner to keep 
him company. 

Peggotty and he peeped at them from his little 
window, and Peggotty, somehow, was very cross, and 
brushed David’s hair the wrong way, very hard. 

But David was ready by and by, and they were soon 
off trotting along on the green turf by the side of the 
road. Mr. Murdstone held him quite easily with one 
arm, and David felt a fascination in turning round to 
look up into his face ; and though he could not make 
up his mind to like him any better, he thought he was 
a very handsome man. 


10 DAVID COPPERFIELD 

They went to an hotel by the sea, where two gentle- 
men were smoking cigars in a room by themselves. 

‘Hulloa, Murdstonel’ they cried, ‘we thought you 
were dead.’ 

‘ Not yet,’ said Mr. Murdstone. 

‘And who’s this shaver?’ said one of the gentlemen, 
taking hold of David. 

* That ’s Davy,’ returned Mr. Murdstone. 

* Davy who ? ’ said the gentleman. ‘ Jones ? ’ 

* Copperfield,’ said Mr. Murdstone. 

‘What! Bewitching Mrs. Copperfield’s incum- 
brance ? The pretty little widow ? ’ 

‘Take care, if you please,’ said Mr. Murdstone; 

‘ somebody’s sharp.’ 

They walked about on the cliff after that, and sat 
on the grass, and looked out of a telescope, and then 
came back to the hotel to an early dinner; and then 
they went on the yacht. 

There was a very nice man on board with a very 
large head of red hair, and a very small shiny hat 
upon it, who had got a cross-barred shirt or waistcoat 
on with ‘Skylark’ in capital letters across the chest. 
David thought it was his name ; and as he lived on 
board ship and hadn’t a street door to put his name on, 
he put it there instead; but when he called him Mr. 
Skylark, he said it meant the yacht. 

They went home early in the evening, and Mrs. 
Copperfield and Mr. Murdstone had another stroll by 
the fence while David was sent in to get his tea ; and 


HIS HAPPY CHILDHOOD 


II 


when Mr. Murdstone was gone, David’s mother asked 
him what he had done all day. 

And David told her everything, not forgetting to 
mention how one of the gentlemen at the hotel had 
called her ‘Bewitching Mrs. Copperfield,’ and ‘The 
pretty little widow,’ which Mrs. Copperfield said was 
nonsense, though she laughed too, and looked a little 
pleased. 

‘ David, dear,’ she hesitated. 

‘Well, Ma.’ 

‘Don’t tell Peggotty; she might be angry with 
them. I would rather Peggotty didn’t know.’ 

And David promised, of course. 


CHAPTER II 


HIS VISIT TO YARMOUTH 

‘ Master Davy/ said Peggotty one evening, about two 
months after his ride with Mr. Murdstone— they were 
sitting together, as Mrs. Copperfield was spending 
the evening out—* Master Davy, how should you like 
to go along with me and spend a fortnight at my 
brother’s at Yarmouth ? Wouldn’t that be a treat ? ’ 

‘Is your brother an agreeable man, Peggotty?* 
asked David. 

* Oh, what an agreeable man he is ! ’ cried Peggotty, 
holding up her hands. ‘ Then there ’s the sea, and the 
boats and ships; and the fishermen and the beach; 
and Am to play with.’ She meant her nephew Ham. 

David grew quite fiushed at the idea, and replied 
that it would indeed be a treat, but what would his 
mother say ? 

‘Why then. I’ll as good as bet a guinea,* said 
Peggotty, ‘ that she ’ll let us go. I *11 ask her, if you 
like, as soon as ever she comes home. There, now I * 

* But what ’s she to do while we ’re away ? * asked 
David. ‘ She can’t live by herself.’ 

Peggotty looked quite confused for a moment, and 


HIS VISIT TO YARMOUTH 13 

pretended to be looking for another hole in the stock- 
ing she was darning. 

‘I say, Peggotty, she can’t live by herself, you 
know.’ 

‘Oh, bless you!’ said Peggotty, looking up as if 
she suddenly remembered. ‘Don’t you know she’s 
going to stay for a fortnight with Mrs. Grayper. Mrs. 
Grayper ’s going to have a lot ol company. 

Oh ! If that was so, David was quite ready to go ; 
and waited in a fever of impatience for his mother’s 
coming home to get leave to carry out this grand 
idea. 

She was not a bit surprised at Peggotty’s invitation. 
Indeed, she seemed to know all about it, and readily 
entered into the plan. 

They were to go in a carrier’s cart which left 
Blunderstone in the morning, after breakfast; for in 
those days there were no railways at all. And David’s 
box was packed, and Peggotty’s box was packed, and 
when the eventful morning came round, there they 
were standing at the gate waiting for the carrier’s 
cart; and David’s mother was kissing him good-bye, 
and holding him so close that he felt her heart beat 
against his. And when the cart arrived, Peggotty and 
he got in, and as they were moving away his mother 
ran out of the gate, calling to the carrier to stop that 
she might kiss her little boy once more. 

At last they were off for good, and left her standing 
in the road; and, looking back, they saw that Mr. 


DAVID COPPERFIELD 


14 

Murdstone had come up to where she stood, and 
seemed to be expostulating with her for being so 
moved; and David, looking round the awning of the 
cart, wondered what business it was of Mr. Murd- 
stone’s. 

The horse, David thought, was the laziest horse in 
the world; it shuffled along with its head down; 
and the carrier held his head down too, like the horse, 
drooping sleepily forward as he drove, with one of his 
arms on each of his knees, and whistled a good deal. 

Peggotty had a basket of refreshments on her knee, 
and she and David ate the good things to pass the 
time away; but the carrier had to call at so many 
places to deliver his parcels, that David was quite 
tired, and very glad to see Yarmouth at last. 

There were sailors walking about the street, and 
carts jingling up and down, and there were smells of 
hsh and oakum and tar, and — 

‘Here’s my Am!’ screamed Peggotty excitedly, 
‘growed out of knowledge!’ as a huge, strong fellow 
of six feet high, with a boyish face and light, curly 
hair, stepped out of the door of the public-house 
where he had been waiting for them. 

He caught up David and put him astride his back 
to carry him home, while he took David’s box under 
his arm. And Peggotty followed with the other box, 
and they turned down lanes strewn with bits of chips 
and sand; and went past boat-builders’ yards, and 
rope-walks, and smiths’ forges, until they came out 


HIS VISIT TO YARMOUTH 15 

upon a flat waste of land across which they could see 
the sea. 

‘Yon’s our house, Mas’r Davy,’ said Ham. 

‘That’s not it? That ship-looking thing?’ asked 
David; for he couldn’t see any house at all— nothing 
but a kind of black barge, not far off, high and dry 
on the ground, with an iron funnel sticking out of it 
for a chimney, and smoking very cosily. 

‘That’s it, Mas’r Davy,’ said Ham. 

David gasped with pleasure at the romantic idea 
of living in such a place. There was a delightful door 
cut in the side, and it was roofed in, and there were 
little windows in it; but the wonderful charm of it 
was, that it was a real boat which had no doubt been 
upon the water hundreds of times, and which had 
never been intended to be lived in on dry land. 

It was beautifully clean inside, and as tidy as 
possible. There was a table, and a Dutch clock, and 
on a chest of drawers a tea-tray, which was kept from 
tumbling down by a Bible, with cups and saucers 
and a teapot grouped around the book. And there 
were boxes which served for seats in lieu of chairs, 
and in the beams of the ceiling were some hooks 
which David wondered what they were used for. 

They were welcomed by a very civil woman in a 
white apron, and a pretty little girl with a necklace 
of blue beads on, who wouldn’t let David kiss her, 
but ran away and hid herself. 

Then Peggotty opened a little door and showed 


i6 


DAVID COPPERFIELD 


David his bedroom. It was in the stern of the vessel 
—the dearest little bedroom ever seen, with a little 
window where the rudder used to go through ; a little 
looking-glass, just the right height for David, nailed 
against the wall, and framed with oyster shells ; a little 
bed, which there was just room enough to get into; 
and a nosegay of seaweed in a blue mug on the table. 

They had boiled dabs for dinner, melted butter, 
and potatoes, with a chop for David ; and had just 
finished when a hairy man with a very good-natured 
face came in, and was introduced to David as Mr. 
Peggotty, the master of the house, and Peggotty’s 
brother. 

‘Glad to see you. Sir,* said Mr. Peggotty, ‘you’ll 
find us rough. Sir, but you ’ll find us ready.* 

David thanked him, and said he was sure to be 
happy in such a delightful place. 

‘How’s your Ma, Sir?* asked Mr. Peggotty. ‘Did 
you leave her pretty jolly?* 

David said, ‘Yes,* and added that she had sent her 
compliments to him. 

‘I’m much obleeged to her. I’m sure,* said Mr. 
Peggotty. ‘Well, Sir, if you can make out here for 
a fortnut long wi* her,* nodding at his sister, and 
Ham, and little Em’ly, we shall be proud of your 
company’ ; and Mr. Peggotty went out to wash himself 
with a kettleful of hot water. 

After tea the door was shut, and all was made snug, 
for the nights were cold and misty. 


HIS VISIT TO YARMOUTH 17 

Little Em’ly had overcome her shyness, and sat 
with David on the lowest locker, which was only 
large enough for two, and just fitted into the chimney 
comer. The civil woman with the white apron was 
knitting on the other side of the fire; and Peggotty 
with her needlework looked very much at home. 
Ham was teaching David some tricks with cards, 
and Mr. Peggotty was comfortably smoking his 
pipe. 

‘ Mr. Peggotty,* said David by and by. 

‘Sir,* said Mr. Peggotty. 

‘ Did you give your son the name of Ham, because 
you lived in a sort of ark ? * 

‘No, Sir, I never giv him no name.’ 

‘ Who gave him that name, then ? * 

‘Why, Sir, his father giv it him.* 

‘ I thought you were his father,* said David. 

‘ My brother Joe was bis father,* said Mr. Peggotty. 

‘Dead, Mr. Peggotty?* asked David, after a re- 
spectful pause. 

‘ Drowndead,* said Mr. Peggotty. 

David was so surprised, that Mr. Peggotty was not 
Ham*s father that he began to wonder next what 
relation he was to little Em’ly. ‘ Little Em’ly,* began 
David, glancing at her. ‘She is your daughter, isn’t 
she, Mr. Peggotty?* 

‘ No, Sir. My brother-in-law, Tom, was her father.* 

‘Dead, Mr. Peggotty?* asked David after another 
respectful pause. 


B 


i8 


DAVID COPPERFIELD 


‘ Drowndead,’ said Mr. Peggotty. 

‘ Haven’t you any children, Mr. Peggotty?* 

‘ No, master. I’m a bacheldore.* 

* A bachelor I * cried David astonished. ‘ Why, who ’s 
that?’ pointing to the civil woman with the white 
apron. 

‘That’s Mrs. Gummidge,’ said Mr. Peggotty. 

‘Gummidge?’ began David, when Peggotty — his 
own Peggotty— frowned at him to say no more; so 
David was silent until it was time to go to bed. 

And then in the privacy of his own little cabin she 
told him that Ham and Em’ly were orphans, whom 
their uncle had adopted when they lost their own 
parents; and that Mrs. Gummidge was the widow 
of his partner in a boat, who had died very poor, 
and Mr. Peggotty had taken her into his house, too, 
when she was destitute ; and that the only thing that 
ever put Mr. Peggotty into a temper was to be re- 
minded of his generosity to her. 

David was very much impressed by Mr. Peggotty’s 
goodness, and thought about it before he went to 
sleep. 

Peggotty, and Mrs. Gummidge, and Little Em’ly 
went to bed in another little cabin at the opposite end 
of the boat, and Mr. Peggotty and Ham hung up two 
hammocks for themselves on the hooks that David 
had seen in the ceiling when he first came in. 

He was up early next morning, and out with little 
Em’ly, picking up stones on the beach. 


HIS VISIT TO YARMOUTH 19 

‘You are quite a sailor, I suppose,’ David said to her. 

‘ No,’ replied Em’ly, shaking her head. ‘ I ’m afraid 
of the sea.’ 

‘ Afraid r exclaimed David, looking boldly at the 
mighty waves. ‘ / an’t.’ 

*Ah! but it’s cruel,’ said little Em’ly. ‘I’ve seen it 
very cruel to some of our men. I’ve seen it tear a 
boat, as big as our house, all to pieces.’ 

I hope it wasn’t the boat that . , .’ 

‘That father was drownded in?’ said Em’ly. ‘No. 
Not that one. I never see that boat.’ 

‘ Nor him ? ’ asked David. 

Little Em’ly shook her head. ‘Not to remember,’ 
she said. 

David told her how he had never seen his father 
either, and how he and his mother lived by themselves 
and always meant to do so, for they were very happy. 
And how his father’s grave was in the churchyard 
near their house, and shaded by a tree. 

Em’ly said, that where her father’s grave was no 
one knew, except that it was somewhere in the sea. 

‘Besides,’ she added, as she looked for shells and 
pebbles, ‘your father was a gentleman, and your 
mother is a lady; and my father was a fisherman 
and my mother was a fisherman’s daughter, and my 
Uncle Dan is a fisherman too.’ 

‘ Dan is Mr. Peggotty, isn’t he? ’ asked David. 

‘Uncle Dan— yonder,’ answered Em’ly, nodding at 
the boat-house. 


20 


DAVID COPPERFIELD 


‘Yes. I mean him. He must be very good,* said 
David, ‘ I should think.* 

‘Good?* said Em’ly. ‘If I was ever to be a lady, 
I’d give him a sky-blue coat with diamond buttons, 
nankeen trousers, a red velvet waistcoat, a cocked 
hat, a large gold watch, a silver pipe, and a box of 
money.* 

They strolled a long way, picking up curious things 
upon the beach, and went back to breakfast at the 
boat-house, glowing with health and pleasure. 

They became very good friends, and used to walk 
about that Yarmouth flat for hours looking for curious 
things, coming back to the boat-house for meals as 
hungry as two young thrushes, Mr. Peggotty said. 

It was a very delightful time. 

The only person who didn’t make herself so agree- 
able as she might have done in that romantic little 
home was Mrs. Gummidge. 

Mrs. Gummidge suffered from low spirits, and 
alluded to herself as a ‘ lone lorn creetur ’ ; and when 
her spirits were extra low, hinted oftener than David 
thought was pleasant, that it would be better for her to 
go to the workhouse, and die, and be a riddance. . 

To which Mr. Peggotty would answer mildly, ‘ Cheer 
up, mawther.* 

‘I an’t what I could wish myself to be,* Mrs. 
Gummidge would say. ‘ I am far from it. I know 
what I am. My troubles has made me contrairy. I 
wish I could be hardened to ’em, but I an’t. I make 


HIS VISIT TO YARMOUTH 2i 


the house uncomfortable. Tm a lone lorn creetur, and 
had much better not make myself contrairy here. If 
thinks must go contrairy with me> and I must go 
contrairy myself, let me go contrairy in my parish, 
Dan’l ; I *d better go into the house, and die, and be a 
riddance.* 

Then Mrs. Gummidge would betake herself to bed, 
and when David looked at Mr. Peggotty, expecting 
him to be vexed or put out, he would just nod his head 
with a look of profound sympathy, and whisper, * She ’s 
been thinking of the old *un.* 

He meant the late Mr. Gummidge. And when he 
had swung himself into his hammock at night after 
one of Mrs. Gummidge’s contrary fits, David would 
hear him repeat to himself, ‘ Poor thing I She *s been 
thinking of the old *un.’ 

Oh I how that fortnight slipped away ! When Ham 
had nothing to do he walked with David and little 
Em’ly, and showed them the boats and ships, and 
once or twice he took them for a row. And all too 
soon the day came at last for going home. 

Little Em’ly walked with David to the public-house 
where the carrier’s cart was waiting, and David 
promised, on the road, to write to her. 

They were very sorry to part with each other, for 
they had become great friends ; but they had to say 
good-bye ; and as the carrier’s cart started for Blunder- 
stone, David remembered with a thrill of joy that he 
would see his mother again. 


CHAPTER III 

STRANGERS IN THE OLD HOME 

As they neared the old dear home, and passed familiar 
places, David grew very much excited, pointing them 
out to Peggotty, and showing how eager he was to 
run into his mother’s arms. 

Peggotty, somehow, did not enter into his transports 
of joy, and tried to check them quietly, and looked 
confused and out of sorts. 

But Blunderstone Rookery came at last ; the carrier 
pulled up his horse, and David and Peggotty got 
down. 

The door opened, and David, half laughing, half 
crying, looked up to see his mother ; but it was not 
his mother at the door. It was a strange servant. 

‘Why, Peggotty!’ cried David ruefully, ‘isn’t she 
come home ? ’ 

‘Yes, yes. Master Davy,’ said Peggotty, ‘she’s come 
home. Wait a bit. Master Davy, and I’ll— I’ll tell 
you something.’ 

Peggotty was quite agitated. She took David by 
the hand, led him into the kitchen, and shut the door. 


STRANGERS IN THE OLD HOME 23 

‘Peggotty!* cried he, quite frightened. ‘What’s 
the matter?’ 

‘ Nothing’s the matter, bless you. Master Davy dear,* 
answered Peggotty, trying to speak cheerfully. 

‘Something’s the matter. I’m sure. Where’s 
Mamma?’ 

‘Where’s Mamma, Master Davy?’ repeated Peg- 
gotty. 

‘Yes, why hasn’t she come out to the gate, and 
what have we come in here for ? O Peggotty I ’ He 
began to tremble. 

‘ Bless the precious boy I What is it ? Speak, my 
pet !’ 

‘Not dead, too ! Oh, she ’s not dead, Peggotty ? ’ 

Peggotty cried out, ‘No.’ And, panting, said that 
he had given her quite a turn. ‘You see, dear,’ she 
added, when she had become quieter, ‘ I should have 
told you before now, but I hadn’t an opportunity. I 
ought to have made it, perhaps, but I couldn’t azackly 
bring my mind to it’ 

‘Go on, Peggotty,’ urged David, more frightened 
than before. 

‘Master Davy,’ said Peggotty, untying her bonnet 
with a shaking hand, ‘what do you think? You’ve 
got a Pal A new one 1* 

‘ A new one,’ repeated David. 

Peggotty gave a gasp, and putting out her hand, 
said, ‘ Come and see him.’ 

‘ I don’t want to see him.’ 


DAVID COPPERFIELD 


24 

‘ And your Mamma/ said Peggotty. 

She took him to the best parlour, and left him there. 
On one side of the fire sat his mother ; on the other 
the gentleman with the black whiskers. 

Mrs. Copperfield had married Mr. Murdstone. 

She dropped her work, and rose hurriedly, but 
timidly, to greet her little boy. 

‘Now, Clara, my dear,’ said Mr. Murdstone. ‘Con- 
trol yourself. Davy boy, how do you do ? ’ 

David gave him his hand. After that he went and 
kissed his mother. She kissed him too, patted him 
gently on the shoulder, and sat down to her work 
again, as if she were afraid to show how much she 
loved her little boy in front of her husband. 

David felt quite stunned. He knew that Mr. Murd- 
stone was looking at them both, and he turned to the 
window and looked out there. 

As soon as he could creep away, he crept upstairs. 
Not to the dear old bedroom. He was to have another 
bedroom now. How altered everything was I It 
hardly seemed the same old house. He went down- 
stairs, and roamed into the yard; but the empty 
dog-kennel was filled with a great black dog, that was 
very angry at the sight of David, and sprang out to get 
at him. 

David ran back to his bedroom, and all the way 
upstairs he heard the dog barking in the yard. His 
heart was very heavy; oh I what a home-coming it 
was I 


STRANGERS IN THE OLD HOME 25 

He sat on the edge of his bed and thought of little 
Em’ly, and wished they had left him with her, for 
nobody seemed to want him here. He was very 
miserable, and at last he rolled himself up in a corner 
of the counterpane, and cried himself to sleep. 

He was awakened at last by a voice sajring, * Here 
he is,* and somebody took the counterpane off his 
head. Then he saw that his mother and Peggotty had 
come to look for him. 

‘ Davy,* said his mother. ‘ What *s the matter ? * 

David thought it was strange that she should ask 
him that. He turned over on his face to hide his 
trembling lips. 

‘ Davy,* she said again. ‘ Davy, my child.* 

But David hid his face in the bedclothes, and pushed 
her away with his hand. 

‘ Peggotty, this is your doing, you cruel thing,* said 
David’s mother, crying out that she had tried to pre- 
judice her boy against her. 

‘Lord forgive you, Mrs. Copperfield,* said Peggotty; 
‘ and for what you have said this minute, may you never 
be truly sorry I * 

‘ It *s enough to distract me— in my honeymoon, too,* 
said David’s mother, ‘ when I might have a little peace 
of mind and happiness. Davy, you naughty boy! 
Peggotty ! * she cried, turning from one to another in 
her wilful, girlish way. 

Suddenly David felt a touch of a hand that he knew 
was neither his mother’s nor Peggotty’s, and he 


26 DAVID COPPERFIELD 

slipped to his feet at the bedside. It was Mr. Murd- 
stone’s hand, and he kept it on his arm, and said : 

‘ What ’s this ? Clara, my love, have you forgotten ? 
Firmness, my dear 1 ’ 

‘ I am very sorry, Edward,* faltered David’s mother. 
* I meant to be so very good, but I am so uncomfort- 
able.’ 

‘Indeed!* said Mr. Murdstone. ‘That’s a bad 
hearing so soon.* Then he drew her to him, whispered 
in her ear, and kissed her, and added, ‘ Go you below, 
my love ; David and I will come down together. My 
friend,* and he turned a darkening face to Peggotty, 
‘ do you know your mistress’s name ? * 

‘She has been my mistress a long time. Sir,* said 
Peggotty, ‘ I ought to know it* 

‘That’s true,* he answered. ‘But as I came up- 
stairs, I heard you address her by a name that is not 
hers. She has taken mine, you know. Will you 
remember that ? * 

Peggotty, with some uneasy glances at David, 
curtsied herself out of the room, without replying; 
and when the two were alone, Mr. Murdstone sat on 
a chair and held David standing before him. 

‘ David,* he said, ‘ if I have an obstinate horse or dog 
to deal with, what do you think I do ? * 

‘ I don’t know.* 

‘ I beat him.* David gasped. * I make him wince, and 
smart. What is that upon your face ? * 

‘ Dirt,* said David ; for his childish heart would have 


STRANGERS IN THE OLD HOME 27 

burst before he would have confessed that the stains 
upon his face were tears. 

Mr. Murdstone smiled. *Wash that face, Sir, and 
come down with me/ he said, and pointed to the 
washstand. 

David did so. Then Mr. Murdstone walked him 
down to the parlour, with his hand still on his arm. 

‘ Clara, my dear,’ he said, ‘ you will not be made un- 
comfortable any more, I hope. We shall soon improve 
our youthful humours.* 

David knew that his mother was sorry to see him 
look so scared and strange, and when he stole to a 
chair, he felt her following him with her eyes more 
sorrowfully still; but she seemed too timid to take 
him in her arms and kiss him as she would have liked 
to do. 

They dined alone— the three together. Mr. Murd- 
stone seemed to be very fond of his pretty young wife, 
and she of him. David liked him none the better for 
that. And from their talk he gathered that an elder 
sister of Mr. Murdstone was expected to come and 
stay with them that evening. 

After dinner a coach drove up, and Mr. Murdstone 
went out to receive his sister. Then David’s mother 
caught David in her arms and kissed him tenderly, 
whispering that he was to love his new father and be 
obedient to him ; and putting her hand behind, held 
his in hers, and walked out with him like that into the 
garden. 


28 


DAVID COPPERFIELD 


Miss Murdstone was a gloomy-looking lady; dark, 
like her brother, whom she greatly resembled in face 
and voice. 

*Is that your boy, sister-in-law?’ she asked, when 
they had brought her into the parlour. * I don’t like 
boys. How d ’ye do, boy ? ’ 

Miss Murdstone had evidently come for good. 

On the very first morning after her arrival she said 
at breakfast, ‘Now, Clara, my dear, I am come here, 
you know, to relieve you of all the trouble I can. 
You ’re much too pretty and thoughtless to have any 
duties imposed upon you that can be undertaken by 
me. If you ’ll be so good as to give me your keys, my 
dear, 1 ’ll attend to all this sort of thing in future.* 

So the keys were handed over to Miss Murdstone, 
and she went about turning out the store-room and all 
the cupboards, arranging everything according to her 
liking ; and kept her brother’s wife in the background 
quite. 

David’s mother didn’t like it very much, and tried to 
protest ; and at last she burst out one day, *It’s very 
hard that in my own house — ’ 

own house?’ repeated Mr. Murdstone, 

‘Clara I’ 

‘Our own house, I mean,* she faltered, evidently 
frightened. ‘It’s very hard that in your own house, 
Edward, I may not have a word to say about domestic 
matters. I am sure I managed very well before we 
were married.’ 


STRANGERS IN THE OLD HOME 29 

‘Edward,* said Miss Murdstone, ‘let there be an end 
of this. I go to-morrow.* 

At that Mr. Murdstone was very angry, and David’s 
mother cried, and in the end she begged Miss Murd- 
stone*s pardon, and humbly asked her to keep the keys, 
and kissed her, and tried to make friends. 

David was so sorry for his mother that he cried 
himself to sleep. And after that the poor little wife 
left the management of her whole house in Miss 
Murdstone’s hands, and never protested again. 

David used to wonder, as they walked home from 
church— Mr. and Miss Murdstone in front, with the 
little wife between them, and David himself lagging 
behind — if the neighbours ever called to mind, as he 
did often, how he and his mother used to walk home 
hand-in-hand so loving and happy together. All gone 
was that happy time ! 

He used to notice the neighbours whispering some- 
times, and looking from her to him. And when he 
looked at her he thought that her step was not so light 
as it used to be, and that her once girlish face had a 
worried, saddened look. 

He learned his lessons with his mother as he used to 
do, but as Mr. and Miss Murdstone were generally in 
the room their presence made him nervous, and the 
geography or spelling that he had taken such pains 
to learn would all fly out of his head, and he would 
stumble and make mistakes. 

He used to think, at those times, that if his mother 


DAVID COPPERFIELD 


30 

had dared she would have shown him the book ; indeed, 
sometimes she would try to give him the cue by mouth- 
ing the words at him. 

‘Clara I' The exclamation would break from Mr. 
Murdstone; and David’s mother would start, and 
colour, and try to smile. 

Then Mr. Murdstone would take the book from her, 
and throw it at David, or box his ears with it, or turn 
him out by the shoulders. 

This kind of treatment made David sullen, and dull, 
and dogged; especially as the Murdstones kept him 
away from his mother when they could. He had one 
comfort, however, which the Murdstones knew nothing 
about — a pleasure, too, which they could not rob 
him of. 

It was this. In a little room upstairs, adjoining his, 
to which he could go when he liked, he found a collec- 
tion of books that his dead father had owned. Oh ! 
those blessed books ! Whenever he was in trouble he 
stole up and read these books— such books I — Roderick 
Random, Peregrine Pickie, Humphry Clinker, Robinson 
Crusoe, The Arabian Nights, and a host of others that 
he got to know by heart. And in his childish way he 
would imagine himself Roderick Random, or play at 
Robinson Crusoe, and get a great deal of comfort 
thereby. 

One morning when he went into the parlour with 
his books, he found his mother looking very anxious, 
while Mr. Murdstone was switching a cane in the 


STRANGERS IN THE OLD HOME 31 

air, and David heard him say, ‘ I Ve often been flogged 
myself.* 

Of course that made David more nervous and more 
stupid than ever, and he began to make many mistakes 
in his lessons. Lesson after lesson was put aside for 
him to learn over again, until his mother burst out 
crying. 

‘ Clara ! * said Miss Murdstone in a warning voice. 

‘ I am not quite well, I think,* faltered the mother. 

‘ David,’ said Mr. Murdstone, taking up the cane, 
‘ you and I will go upstairs, boy.* 

The mother stretched out her arms and ran after 
them to the door; but Miss Murdstone stopped her, 
and David saw her put her fingers into her ears, and 
heard her sob. 

Mr. Murdstone took David upstairs, and when they 
reached his room, he caught David’s head under his 
arm. 

‘ Mr. Murdstone I Sir 1 * cried David. ‘ Don’t ! Pray 
don’t beat me I I have tried to learn, Sir, but I can’t 
learn while you and Miss Murdstone are by. I can’t 
indeed.* 

‘Can’t you, indeed, David?* he said. ‘We’ll try 
that.* 

Then the cane went up and cut down heavily, and in 
the same instant David caught Mr. Murdstone’s hand 
between his teeth, and bit it through. 

He beat him then as if he would have beaten him to 
death. David screamed, and he heard the others 


DAVID COPPERFIELD 


32 

running upstairs. He heard his mother crying out— 
and Peggotty. 

Then Mr. Murdstone left him alone and locked the 
door, and David fell down sobbing, and sore, and raging 
upon the floor. 

After a while his passion began to cool, and he began 
to think he had been very wicked to have bitten Mr. 
Murdstone’s hand. He sat listening; but could not 
hear a sound. Then he crawled up from the floor, and 
looked at his face in the glass, so swollen, and red, and 
blotched ; and he was so sore and stiff from the beating 
that to move was real pain ; but he crawled up to the 
window and laid his head upon the sill, and looked out 
listlessly, and cried and dozed in turns. 

The room was getting dark when the key of the door 
was turned, and Miss Murdstone stalked in with some 
bread, and meat, and milk. She did not say a word, 
only looked at him very coldly; then she went out 
again and locked the door. 

He sat there till it grew quite dark, wondering 
whether any one else would come; and then he un- 
dressed and crept to bed. He began to be afraid, as 
he lay there, at what he had done, and wondered what 
they were going to do to him. 

Was it a crime that he had committed ? And would 
a policeman come for him to take him away to prison ? 
He could not tell. 

Miss Murdstone appeared again next morning before 
he was out of bed, and told him coldly that he was at 


STRANGERS IN THE OLD HOME 33 

liberty to walk for half an hour in the garden. After 
that he had to go back to his room again ; and in the 
evening she came and escorted him down to the 
parlour for family prayers, where he had to kneel down 
far away from the others, near the door. His mother 
was not allowed to speak to him ; and Mr. Murdstone's 
hand was bound up in a large linen wrapper. 

If he could have seen his mother alone he would 
have gone on his knees to beg her forgiveness ; but he 
never saw her alone. For five days he was kept a 
prisoner in his room, and on the fifth night, after he 
had gone to bed, he was awakened by hearing his name 
spoken in a whisper. He started up, and groping his 
way to the door he put his mouth to the keyhole, 
whispering, ‘ Is that you, Peggotty, dear? * 

‘Yes, my own precious Davy,’ she replied. ‘Be as 
soft as a mouse, or the Cat will hear us.* 

David knew that she meant Miss Murdstone. 
‘How’s Mamma, dear Peggotty? Is she very angry 
with me ? ’ 

Peggotty was crying softly on the other side of the 
keyhole. ‘ No. Not very,’ she said. 

‘What is going to be done with me, Peggotty, do 
you know ? * 

‘School. Near London,’ came Peggotty’s whisper 
through the keyhole. 

‘When, Peggotty?’ 

‘To-morrow.’ 

‘ Shan’t I see Mamma ? ’ 


c 


34 DAVID COPPERFIELD 

‘Yes,’ whispered Peggotty. ‘Morning.* Then she 
put her mouth close to the keyhole, saying in disjointed 
sentences. ‘Davy, dear. If I an’t ben exackly as 
intimate with you. Lately as I used to be. It ain’t 
because I don’t love you. Just as much and more, my 
pretty poppet. It ’s because I thought it better for you. 
And for some one else besides. Davy, my darling, are 
you listening ? Can you hear ? ’ 

‘Ye — ye — yes, Peggotty,’ he sobbed. 

‘My own,’ said Peggotty with infinite compassion. 
‘ What I want to say is. That you must never forget 
me. For I ’ll never forget you. And I ’ll take as much 
care of your Mamma, Davy. As I ever took of you. 
And I won’t ever leave her. And I ’ll write to you, my 
dear. And I ’ll— I ’ll ’ Peggotty fell to kissing the key- 
hole, as she could not kiss David himself. 

‘ Thank you, dear Peggotty. Oh, thank you I Thank 
you. Will you promise me one thing, Peggotty ? Will 
you write and tell Mr. Peggotty and little Em’ly, and 
Mrs. Gummidge and Ham, that I ’m not so bad as they 
might suppose, and that I sent them all my love— 
especially to little Em’ly? Will you, if you please, 
Peggotty?’ 

Good, kind Peggotty promised, and they both kissed 
the keyhole with the greatest affection. 

In the morning Miss Murdstone appeared as usual, 
and told David he was going to school. David did not 
tell her it was stale news. 

He went down with her to the parlour where he was 


STRANGERS IN THE OLD HOME 35 

to have his breakfast ; and there he found his mother, 
very pale, and with red eyes. David ran into her arms, 
and begged her to forgive him. 

‘O DavyT she said, ‘that you could hurt any one 
that I love I Try to be better. I forgive you ; but I am 
so grieved, Davy, that you should have such bad pas- 
sions in your heart.’ 

For the Murdstones had made out to her that David 
was a wicked fellow, not worthy of her pity and love. 
He tried to eat his breakfast, but the tears dropped 
upon his bread-and-butter, and trickled into his tea. 
He saw his mother looking at him yearningly, but 
Miss Murdstone looked at her, and then she looked 
away. 

Presently wheels were heard at the gate. He heard 
Miss Murdstone say, ‘ Master Copperfield’s box there ! ’ 
and Barkis, the carrier, came and lifted it up and put it 
into his cart. 

‘Good-bye, Davy. You are going for your own 
good,’ said his mother, holding him. ‘Good-bye, my 
child. I forgive you, my dear boy. God bless you.’ 

‘ Clara r interrupted Miss Murdstone. His mother 
let him go, and Miss Murdstone conducted him to the 
cart and said that she hoped that he would repent, before 
he came to a bad end. David couldn’t see Peggotty 
anywhere, and Mr. Murdstone did not appear. 

He got into the cart, and the lazy horse that had 
taken him that happy day to Yarmouth, walked off in 
his shuffling way. 


CHAPTER IV 
TRAVELLING BY COACH 

They might have gone about half a mile when the 
carrier suddenly stopped short. And David, looking 
out to see why he didn’t go on, saw Peggotty run 
down from behind a hedge, and climb up into the cart. 

She took him in her arms and kissed and hugged 
him ; but was panting too much to say a single word. 
Then releasing one of her arms, she put it down into 
her pocket to the elbow, and brought out some paper 
bags of cakes, which she crammed into David’s pockets, 
and a purse which she put into his hand. Then she 
gave him another squeeze and got down from the cart 
and ran away. 

* Come up,’ said the carrier to the lazy horse, and the 
horse shuffled on again. 

David cried until he could cry no more, and Barkis, 
looking at him, suggested that his wet handkerchief 
should be spread upon the horse’s back to dry. David 
gave it to him, and the carrier spread it there; and 
David, looking into the purse that Peggotty had given 
him, found three bright shillings in it. And in another 
compartment he found two half-crowns wrapped up in 


TRAVELLING BY COACH 37 

a piece of paper on which was written in his mother’s 
hand, ‘ For Davy, with my love.’ 

David was so overcome that he began to cry again, 
and asked the carrier to reach him his handkerchief 
from the horse’s back. But Barkis said he thought he 
was better without, so David wiped his eyes on his 
sleeves instead, and stopped crying. 

Then they had a little talk, and Barkis said he was 
only going as far as Yarmouth. * And there,’ he said, 

‘ I shall take you to the stage-cutch, and the stage-cutch 
that ’ll take you to — wherever it is.’ 

David then offered Barkis one of his cakes, which he 
ate at one gulp, just like an elephant. ‘ Did she make 
’em, now?’ asked the carrier, leaning forward in his 
slouching way. 

‘ Peggotty, do you mean ? ’ 

‘ Ah I ’ said Barkis. ‘ Her.’ 

‘Yes. She makes all our pastry and does all the 
cooking.’ 

‘Do she though,’ said Barkis. He made up his 
mouth to whistle, but he didn’t whistle, and looked at 
the horse’s ears. 

‘No sweethearts, I believe?’ he asked after a con- 
siderable time. 

‘Sweatmeats, did you say, Mr. Barkis?’ said David, 
thinking he wanted something more to eat. 

‘ Hearts,’ said Barkis, ‘ sweethearts ; no person walks 
with her ! ’ 

‘With Peggotty?’ 


DAVID COPPERFIELD 


38 

‘Ah I Her; 

‘ Oh, no. She never had a sweetheart.’ 

‘ Didn’t she though,’ said Barkis. Again he made up 
his mouth to whistle, and again he didn't whistle, but 
sat looking at the horse’s ears. 

‘So she makes all the apple parsties, and does all the 
cooking, do she ? ’ 

David said yes. 

‘Well, I’ll tell you what,’ said Barkis. ‘P’raps you 
might be writing to her ? ’ 

David nodded. 

‘ Ah 1 ’ he said slowly, turning his eyes on him. ‘ Well ! 
If you was writin’ to her, p’raps you ’d recollect to say 
that Barkis is willin’ ; would you ? ’ 

‘ That Barkis is willing. Is that all the message ? ’ 

‘Ye— es,’ he said, considering. ‘Ye— es. Barkis is 
willin’.’ 

‘But you’ll be at Blunderstone again to-morrow, 
Mr. Barkis, and could give your own message so 
much better.’ 

But Barkis only shook his head and repeated, 
‘ “ Barkis is willin’.” That ’s the message.’ 

So while they were waiting in the hotel at Yarmouth 
for the coach, David got a sheet of paper and an ink- 
stand, and wrote this letter to Peggotty : 

‘ My dear Peggotty. I have come here safe. Barkis 
is willing. My love to Mamma. Yours affectionately. 
P. S. He says he particularly wants you to know — 
Barkis is willing' 


TRAVELLING BY COACH 39 

By and by the mistress of the hotel asked if that was 
the little gentleman from Blunderstone, and having 
discovered it was so, she rang a bell and called to a 
waiter to take David to the coffee-room. 

The waiter took him into a large, long room and laid 
a cloth, and brought in some chops and vegetables, put 
a chair for David at the table, and said affably, ‘Now, 
six foot I Come on I ’ 

David took his seat, but was so abashed at the 
waiter standing opposite and staring at him that he 
splashed himself with the gravy, and blushed very much. 

‘There’s half a pint of ale for you,’ said the waiter. 
‘ Will you have it now ? * 

David thanked him, and said, ‘Yes.’ Upon which he 
poured it out of a jug into a large tumbler, and held it 
up against the light. 

‘ My eye ! ’ he said, ‘ it seems a good deal, don’t it ? ’ 

David agreed, and felt quite pleased to find him such 
a pleasant man. 

‘There was a gentleman here yesterday,’ he said, ‘a 
stout gentleman, by the name of Topsawyer ; perhaps 
you know him ? ’ 

‘ No,’ said David. 

* In breeches and gaiters, broad-brimmed hat, 
speckled choker,’ said the waiter. 

‘ No,’ repeated David bashfully. 

‘ He come in here,’ said the waiter, ‘ordered a glass 
of this ale — would order it— I told him not— drank it, 
and fell dead.* 


DAVID COPPERFIELD 


40 

David was much startled, and said he thought he had 
better have some water. 

‘ Why, you see,' said the waiter, looking at the tumbler 
with one of his eyes shut up, ‘our people don’t like 
things being ordered and then left. It offends ’em. 
But I ’ll drink it, if you like. I ’m used to it, and use is 
everything. I don’t think it ’ll hurt me, if I throw my 
head back, and take it off quick. Shall I ? ’ 

David said if he was sure it wouldn’t hurt him, he 
would be very much obliged to him. And when the 
waiter did throw his head back, and take it off quick, 
David watched him in some alarm lest he, too, should 
fall down dead. But it didn’t hurt him. 

Indeed, on the contrary, the waiter seemed the fresher 
for it. 

‘What have we got here?’ said he, putting a fork 
into the dish. ‘ Not chops ? ’ 

‘ Chops,’ said David. 

‘ Lord bless my soul 1 ’ he exclaimed. ‘ I didn’t know 
they were chops. Why, a chop’s the very thing to 
take off the bad effects of that beer ! Ain’t it lucky ? ’ 

So he took a chop by the bone in one hand, and a 
potato in the other, and ate away with a very good 
appetite. 

After the chops were finished, he brought a pudding, 
and putting it before David, he appeared to become 
absent in his mind for some moments. 

‘ How ’s the pie? ’ he said suddenly, 

‘ It ’s a pudding,’ said David. 


TRAVELLING BY COACH 


41 


* Pudding 1 ’ he exclaimed. * Why, bless me, so it is. 
What I * looking at it nearer, ‘ you don't mean to say 
it ’s a batter pudding I * 

‘ Yes, it is, indeed.’ 

‘Why, a batter pudding,’ he said, taking up a table- 
spoon, ‘is my favourite pudding I Ain’t that lucky! 
Come on, little ’un, and let ’s see who ’ll get most.’ 

The waiter certainly got most. He entreated David 
more than once to come in and win, but what with his 
table-spoon to David’s tea-spoon, and his appetite to 
David’s appetite, the small boy was left far behind. 

By and by the blowing of the coach horn sounded in 
the yard ; and when David was being helped up behind 
the coach, he heard the mistress of the hotel say to the 
guard, ‘ Take care of that child, George, or he *11 burst 1 ’ 
And then some of the women servants of the hotel came 
out to look at him, and giggled. 

They thought he had eaten all the chops and all the 
potatoes in the dish, and the whole of the batter pudding 
himself. 

And when the coachman had cracked his whip and 
they were well on their way, he and the guard had 
some jokes about the coach drawing heavy behind, on 
account of David’s sitting there, and suggested that he 
ought to have travelled by wagon. 

Then the outside passengers got hold of the story of 
his supposed large appetite, and asked David whether 
he was going to be paid for at school as two brothers 
or three, and were very merry over it indeed. 


DAVID COPPERFIELD 


42 

Poor David was so ashamed, that when the coach 
stopped for the passengers to have supper at another 
hotel, he pretended he was not hungry at all, and did 
not take any supper, though he would have liked some 
very much. This did not save him from more jokes, 
however, for an old gentleman said he was like a boa- 
constrictor, that took enough at one meal to last him 
for a long time. 

In those days, as I explained before, there were no 
railways at all, and people journeying from one place 
to another always travelled by coach. 

They had left Yarmouth at three o’clock in the after- 
noon, and would not reach London till eight the 
next morning. It was fine summer weather though, 
and the evening was very pleasant. David liked driving 
through the villages one after another, and tried to 
picture to himself what the insides of the houses were 
like. Sometimes boys came running after them and 
swung on to the coach for a little while, and David 
wondered whether their fathers were alive, and whether 
they were happy at home. He thought a good deal, too, 
of his mother and Peggotty, but it seemed ages since 
he had left Blunderstone. 

Morning came at last, and by and by great, busy, 
bustling London came in sight, and in due time the 
coach reached its destination at an inn, somewhere in 
the Whitechapel district. 

* Is there anybody here for a youngster booked in the 
name of Murdstone, from Bloonderstone, SoofTolk, to 


TRAVELLING BY COACH 43 

be left till called for ? * asked the guard at the booking- 
office. 

Nobody answered. 

‘Try Copperfield, if you please, Sir, said David. 

The guard repeated his question, adding, ‘ But 
owning to the name of Copperfield.* 

No, there was nobody. 

And a facetious man in gaiters suggested that they 
should put a brass collar round David’s neck, and tie 
him up in the stable. 

Then a ladder was brought, and all the passengers 
got down, and the luggage was cleared away, and the 
horses were taken out of the coach. Still nobody 
appeared to claim the dusty youngster from Blunder- 
stone, Suffolk. 

David went into the booking-office, and the clerk let 
him sit on the scale where all the luggage was weighed ; 
and the little fellow sat looking at the parcels, and 
wondering what would happen to him suppose nobody 
were to come for him. 


CHAPTER V 

FIRST WEEKS AT SALEM HOUSE 

At last a gaunt, sallow young man, with hollow cheeks, 
dressed in a suit of rusty black, rather short in the 
sleeves and legs, came into the office and whispered to 
the clerk, who slanted David off the scale and pushed 
him over to the newcomer. He took hold of David’s 
hand, and the two went out together. 

‘You’re the new boy,’ he said. ‘I’m one of the 
masters at Salem House.’ 

David made him a bow and felt very much overawed ; 
and was so ashamed to mention such a commonplace 
thing as his box, to a scholar and a master at Salem 
House, that they had gone some distance before he had 
the courage to allude to it. So they went back to the 
office, and the master told the clerk that the carrier 
would call for it at noon. 

* If you please. Sir,’ asked David, when they were on 
their way again, * is it far ? ’ 

‘ It ’s down by Blackheath,’ he said. 

‘ Is that far. Sir?’ asked David. 

‘It’s a good step,’ he said. ‘We shall go by the 

stage-coach. It ’s about six miles.’ 

66 


FIRST WEEKS AT SALEM HOUSE 45 

David felt so tired and faint, for he had eaten 
nothing since the waiter had helped him with his 
chops and batter pudding yesterday, that he took 
heart to tell the master so. 

The Master then said that he wanted to call on an 
old person not far off, and that if David bought some- 
thing on the way he could eat it at her house. 

So they bought a nice little loaf of brown bread at 
a baker’s shop; and then got an egg and a slice of 
streaky bacon at a grocer’s, and David carried them 
until they came to the poor person’s house, which, 
David saw at once, was a part of some alms- 
houses. 

The Master lifted the latch of one of a number of 
little black doors that were all alike, and they went 
into the little house of a poor old woman who was 
blowing a fire to make a little saucepan boil. 

As soon as she saw the Master she cried out some- 
thing like ‘ My Charley ! ’ but on seeing David come 
in too, she got up and made a confused sort of 
curtsy. 

‘Can you cook this young gentleman’s breakfast 
for him, if you please?’ said the Master at Salem 
House. 

‘Can I?* said the old woman. ‘Yes, can I, sure.’ 
And she cooked it very nicely indeed. 

While David was enjoying his meal, the old woman 
said, ‘ Have you got your flute with you ? ’ 

‘Yes,’ answered the Master. 


46 DAVID COPPERFIELD 

‘ Have a blow at it,’ said the old woman, coaxingly. 
‘Do.’ 

So the Master pulled out his flute in three pieces, 
which he screwed together, and immediately began to 
play. 

David thought that the tune he played was a very 
dismal one and most melancholy, so melancholy, indeed, 
that it first brought tears into his eyes, and then 
made him go to sleep. And while he was dozing he 
had a fancy that the old woman crept nearer the 
Master until she was close enough to give him an 
affectionate squeeze round the neck. 

But he woke up by and by, and the Master un- 
screwed his flute and put the pieces away ; and told 
David it was time to go for the coach. 

It was not far off, and they got upon the roof ; but 
David was so sleepy that when they stopped on the 
road to take up somebody else, they put him inside 
the coach where there were no passengers, and he 
slept sound. 

The coach stopped by and by, and the Master 
fetched him out, and a short walk brought them to a 
dull-looking place with a high brick wall all round, 
and over a door in the wall was a board with SALEM 
HOUSE upon it; and through a grating in the door 
a surly face peered at them when they rang the bell, 
and a short man with a bull-neck, a wooden leg, and 
his hair cut close all round his head, opened the door. 

‘The new boy,’ said the Master. 


FIRST WEEKS AT SALEM HOUSE 47 

The man with the wooden leg eyed David over, and 
locked the gate behind them, and shouted, * Hallo \ ’ 
when they had gone towards the house. 

They looked back, and the man, who was standing 
at the door of a little lodge with a pair of boots in his 
hand, said, * Here ! The cobbler ’s been, since you Ve 
been out, Mr. Mell, and he says he can’t mend ’em any 
more. He says there ain’t a bit of the original boot 
left, and he wonders you expect it* Then he threw 
the boots towards Mr. Mell, who picked them up, and 
looked at them very disconsolately. And David then 
noticed for the first time that the boots he had on were 
very much the worse for wear. 

There was not a sound about the place. It was so 
quiet that David asked if the bo3rs were all out. 

Then Mr. Mell explained to him that it was holiday 
time, and that the boys were all at their homes, and 
that Mr. Creakle, the proprietor, was at the seaside 
with Mrs. and Miss Creakle; and that David was sent 
there in holiday time as a punishment for having 
bitten Mr. Murdstone. 

The schoolroom was the most desolate place David 
had ever seen— a long room with three long rows of 
desks, and six forms splashed all over with ink. 

Mr. Mell left him there while he carried his boots 
upstairs, and David, looking round the room, suddenly 
espied a pasteboard placard, beautifully written, 
which was lying on the desk, and bore these words : 
‘ Take care of him. He bites,' 


48 DAVID COPPERFIELD 

At that he got upon the desk immediately and looked 
round with anxious eyes for the dog, but couldn’t see 
him ; and then Mr. Mell came in, and asked what he 
was doing up there. 

‘ I beg your pardon, Sir,* said David. * If you please, 
I ’m looking for the dog.* 

‘ Dog ? * said Mr. Mell. ‘ What dog ? * 

‘ Isn’t it a dog. Sir ? * 

‘ Isn’t what a dog ? ’ 

‘ That ’s to be taken care of. Sir ; that bites.* 

*No, Copperfield,’ said Mr. Mell gravely, ‘that ’snot 
a dog. That’s a boy. My instructions are. Copper- 
field, to put this placard on your back. I am sorry 
to make such a beginning with you, but I must 
do it.’ 

With that he took David down, and tied the placard 
like a knapsack on his shoulders. 

Poor David 1 What he suffered from that placard 
nobody can imagine. He knew that the servants read 
it, and the butcher read it ; that everybody that came 
to the house of a morning when he was ordered to 
walk in the playground, which was a bare gravelled 
yard at the back of the house, read that he was to be 
taken care of, as he bit. And whenever the man with 
the wooden leg saw him lean against the wall to hide 
it, he would roar out in a cruel voice : 

‘Hallo, you Sir! You Copperfield! Show that 
badge conspicuous, or I ’ll report you ! ’ 

David had long tasks to do with Mr. Mell every day ; 


FIRST WEEKS AT SALEM HOUSE 49 

but, as neither Mr. nor Miss Murdstone was there to 
make him nervous, he did them without disgrace. 

He and Mr. Mell dined at one, at the end of a long, 
bare dining-room. Then he had more tasks till tea, 
and walked afterwards in the playground, overlooked 
by the man with the wooden leg. 

Mr. Mell never said much to him, but he was never 
harsh to David. And when he went to bed among the 
unused rooms full of empty beds, he couldn’t help 
crying sometimes for a comfortable word from Peg- 
gotty. 

There was an old door in the playground, on which 
the boys had a custom of carving their names. It was 
completely covered with them. And as David read 
the names he couldn’t help wondering how each boy 
would read the placard on his back, ‘ Take care of him. 
He bites,* 

There was one boy — a certain J. Steerforth— who 
cut his name very deep, who, David imagined, would 
read it in rather a strong voice, and afterwards pull 
his hair. And there was another. Tommy Traddles, 
who, he dreaded, would make game of it, and pretend 
to be dreadfully frightened of him. 

There were forty-five boys in all, Mr. Mell told him, 
and though he longed often for their companionship, 
he dreaded their coming to read, * Take care of him. 
He bites* 




CHAPTER VI 


J. STEERFORTH AND TRADDLES 

David had lead this life for about a month, when the 
man with the wooden leg began to stump about with 
a mop and a bucket of water, and David was always 
in the way of two or three women brushing and 
dusting about. Then one day Mr. Mell told him that 
Mr. Creakle would be home in the evening ; and that 
night before his bed-time the man with the wooden 
leg came and fetched him to appear before Mr. 
Creakle. 

David was taken into the parlour, but he was 
trembling so much that he hardly saw Mrs. and Miss 
Creakle, who were sitting there, or anything but Mr. 
Creakle— a stout gentleman with a bunch of watch 
chain and seals, in an armchair, with a tumbler and 
bottle beside him. 

* So ! ’ said Mr. Creakle. * This is the young gentle- 
man whose teeth are to be filed I Turn him round ! * 

The wooden-legged man turned him round so as to 
show the placard, then turned him about again with 
his face to Mr. Creakle, and posted himself at Mr, 
Creakle’s side. 


60 


J. STEERFORTH AND TRADDLES 51 

Mr. Creakle’s face was fiery, and his eyes were small 
and deep in his head ; he had a little nose, and a large 
chin ; but what impressed David most was the fact 
that he had no voice, for he spoke in a whisper. 

‘Now,* said Mr. Creakle, ‘what’s the report of this 
boy?’ 

‘There’s nothing against him yet,’ said the man 
with the wooden leg. 

Mr. Creakle looked disappointed. Mrs. and Miss 
Creakle, who were both thin and quiet, looked pleased. 

‘Come here, Sir,’ said Mr. Creakle, beckoning to 
David. 

‘ I have the happiness of knowing your step-father,’ 
said Mr. Creakle in his whisper, taking him by the 
ear; ‘and a very worthy man he is, and a man of 
strong character. He knows me, and I know him. 
Do you know me? Hey ? ’ said Mr. Creakle, pinching 
his ear. 

‘ Not yet. Sir,’ said David, flinching with the pain. 

‘ Not yet ? Hey ? But you will soon, hey ? ’ 

‘You will soon, hey?’ repeated the man with the 
wooden leg. And David afterwards found that he 
generally acted, with his strong voice, as Mr. Creakle’s 
interpreter to the boys. 

David was very much frightened, and said, he hoped 
so, if he pleased. 

‘I’ll tell you what I am,’ whispered Mr. Creakle, 
letting his ear go at last, with a parting pinch that 
brought the tears into his eyes, ‘ I’m a Tartar.’ 


52 DAVID COPPERFIELD 

‘A Tartar/ repeated the man with the wooden 
leg. 

‘When I say I’ll do a thing, I do it,’ said Mr. 
Creakle, ‘ and when I say I will have a thing done, I 
will have it done.’ 

‘—Will have a thing done, I will have it done,’ 
repeated the man with the wooden leg, like an echo. 

After that Mr. Creakle ordered him away, and 
David, wondering at his own courage, blurted out, 
‘ If you please, Sir ’ 

‘Hah?* whispered Mr. Creakle, ‘what’s this?’ 

‘ If you please. Sir, if I might be allowed (I am very 
sorry indeed, Sir, for what I did) to take this writing 
off, before the boys come back ’ 

Mr. Creakle made a burst out of his chair, and David 
without waiting for the man with the wooden leg, fled 
out of the room, and never stopped till he reached his 
own bedroom ; and getting into bed he lay quaking 
there for a couple of hours. 

Next morning Mr. Sharp came back. Mr. Sharp 
was the first master, and superior to Mr. Mell. Mr. 
Mell took his meals with the boys, but Mr. Sharp 
dined and supped at Mr. Creakle’s table. He was a 
limp, delicate-looking man, with a good deal of nose, 
and a lot of smooth, wavy hair. 

The first boy that returned was Tommy Traddles. 
He introduced himself to David by saying that he 
would find his name on the right-hand corner of the 
gate, over the top bolt. 


J. STEERFORTH AND TRADDLES 53 

‘ Traddles ? ’ said David. 

‘ The same/ said Traddles. And then he asked for 
a full account of David and his family ; and informed 
him that Mr. Sharp’s hair was not his own, but that 
he wore a wig (a second-hand one), and that Mr. 
Sharp went out every Saturday afternoon to get it 
curled. 

It was a happy thing for David that Traddles arrived 
first. He enjoyed the placard very much, and saved 
David from embarrassment by presenting him to 
every other boy that came back, in this form of in- 
troduction. 

* Look here I Here 's a game.* 

Some of the boys danced around him like wild 
Indians, and some called him ‘Towser,* and others 
patted him, and said, ‘ Lie down. Sir,* but the greater 
part of the boys were so low-spirited at having to 
return, that they were not as merry at David’s expense 
as they might otherwise have been. 

J. Steerforth hadn’t come yet. The boys spoke of 
him as a clever fellow and very handsome, and David 
was not considered as being formally received into the 
school till J. Steerforth arrived. 

He turned up at last; he was about six years 
older than David, and the new boy was taken to him 
as before a magistrate. 

Under a shed in the playground Steerforth examined 
the placard, and inquired into the particulars of 
David’s punishment 


DAVID COPPERFIELD 


54 

David told him all about Mr. Murdstone and how he 
had bitten his hand. 

Whereupon J. Steerforth said that the placard was 
‘A jolly shame,’ which bound David to him ever after. 

‘What money have you got, Copperfield?* asked 
Steerforth, taking him aside. 

David told him seven shillings. 

‘You had better give it to me to take care of,* he 
said; ‘at least you can if you like. You needn’t if 
you don’t like.* 

David immediately opened Peggotty’s purse, and 
turned it upside down into his hand. 

‘ Do you want to spend anything now ? * he asked. 

‘ No, thank you,* said David. 

‘You can if you like, you know,* said Steerforth. 
‘ Say the word.* 

‘ No, thank you,* repeated David. 

‘ Perhaps you *d like to spend a couple of shillings or 
so in a bottle of currant wine by and by, up in the 
bedroom. You belong to my bedroom, I find.* 

Davie said he would like that. 

‘Very good,* said Steerforth. ‘You’ll be glad to 
spend another shilling or so in almond cakes, 1 dare 
say?* 

David thought he would like that too. 

‘And another shilling in biscuits, and another in 
fruit, eh ? * said Steerforth. ‘ I say, young Copperfield, 
you *re going it ! * 

He smiled, and David couldn’t help smiling too. 


J. STEERFORTH AND TRADDLES 55 

‘ Well/ said Steerforth, ‘ we must make it stretch as 
far as we can ; that ’s all. I ’ll do the best in my power 
for you. I can go out when I like, and I ’ll smuggle 
the prog in.’ Then he put the money into his pocket 
and kindly told David that he ’d take care it should be 
all right. 

He was as good as his word: for when they went 
upstairs to bed he produced the whole seven shillings- 
worth, and laid it out on David’s bed in the moonlight, 
saying : 

‘There you are, young Copperfield, and a royal 
spread you ’ve got ! ’ 

David couldn’t dream of doing the honours of the 
feast while this clever, handsome fellow was by, so he 
begged Steerforth to preside. The other boys in the 
bedroom seconded David’s wish, and Steerforth 
gracefully acceded to it, and sat upon the pillow, 
handing round the cakes and fruits with perfect 
fairness, indeed, and dispensing the currant wine in 
a little glass without a foot, which was his own 
property; while David sat on his left hand, with the 
others grouped around them. 

They all spoke in whispers; and when Steerforth 
wanted to look for anything, he dipped a match into 
a phosphorus-box and shed a blue glare that was 
gone in a second. 

They told the new boy in whispers all about the 
school; that Mr. Creakle was the sternest and most 
severe of masters; and that he laid about him, right 


DAVID COPPERFIELD 


56 

and left, every day of his life. That he had taken to 
the schooling business after being bankrupt in hops, 
and that he had made away with Mrs. Creakle’s 
money. That the man with the wooden leg, whose 
name was Tungay, had been in the hop business too, 
and had broken his leg in Mr. Creakle’s service. 
That Mr. Creakle had a son, who had not been 
Tungay’s friend, and who, for interfering with his 
father’s harsh treatment in the school, had been 
turned out of doors : and that Mrs. and Miss Creakle 
had been sad ever since. 

He heard also that Mr. Sharp and Mr. Mell were 
both supposed to be wretchedly paid; that Mr. Mell 
was not a bad sort of fellow, but hadn’t a sixpence to 
bless himself with ; and that old Mrs. Mell, his mother, 
was as poor as Job. David suddenly remembered the 
old woman who had cried, * My Charley! ’ when he went 
to have his breakfast cooked, but he didn’t tell that to 
the others. 

And he heard, too, that Miss Creakle was sup- 
posed by all the boys to be in love with Steerforth, 
which he didn’t wonder at at all; and that Steer- 
forth was a parlour boarder, the son of a very 
rich lady, and the only boy in the school on 
whom Mr. Creakle never ventured to lay a hand. 
After that the boys dispersed and betook them- 
selves to bed. 

David thought a great deal of Steerforth after he 
went to bed» and raised himself on his elbow to look 


J. STEERFORTH AND TRADDLES 57 

at him lying in the moonlight with his handsome face 
turned up, and his head reclining on his arm. 

‘ Good night, young Copperfield,* he had said before 
he went to sleep. ‘ I ’ll take care of you.’ 

And David in his gratitude and admiration looked 
up to him as a hero and a king. 


CHAPTER VII 


SCHOOL LIFE 

School began in earnest next day. 

The roar of voices in the schoolroom suddenly 
became as hushed as death when Mr. Creakle came 
in, and stood in the doorway looking round upon the 
boys, and crying in a ferocious whisper, ‘ Silence ! * 
Tungay stood at his elbow, repeating in his strong 
voice what Mr. Creakle said in a whisper. 

‘Now, boys, this is a new half. Take care what 
you *re about in this new half. Come fresh up to the 
lessons, I advise you, for I come fresh up to the punish- 
ment. I won’t flinch. It will be no use your rubbing 
yourselves ; you won’t rub the marks out of that which 
I shall give you. Now get to work, every boy I * 

Then Tungay stumped out, and Mr. Creakle came 
to where David sat, and told him that if he were 
famous for biting, Mr. Creakle was famous for biting 
too. He then showed David the cane, and asked him 
what he thought of that for a tooth ? Was it a sharp 
tooth, hey? Was it a double tooth, hey? Did it bite, 
hey? And at every question, he gave David a cut 
with it that made him writhe. 


6b 


SCHOOL LIFE 


59 

But he was not the only boy that was caned that 
day; half the school was writhing and crying before 
the day’s work was done, and Mr. Creakle seemed to 
enjoy his share of it very much. 

He was an ignorant and cruel man, whose sole duty 
and pleasure consisted in punishing the boys. The 
teaching was left to Mr. Sharp and Mr. Mell. 

Poor Traddles was a most unfortunate boy, and 
got caned every day that half-year; but he was the 
merriest if he was the most miserable of the boys, and 
after laying his head on the desk for a little while he 
would cheer up somehow, begin to laugh again, and draw 
skeletons all over his slate, before his eyes were dry. 

He was very honourable, Traddles was; and held 
it a solemn duty in the boys to stand by one another. 
Once Steerforth laughed in church, and the beadle 
thought it was Traddles, and took him out. He never 
said who was the real offender, though he smarted for 
it the next day. But he had his reward. Steerforth 
said there was nothing of the sneak in Traddles, and 
the boys all felt that to be the highest praise. 

Steerforth continued his protection of David, and 
proved a very useful friend; because nobody dared 
to annoy one whom he honoured with his friendship. 
Once, when they were talking in the playground, 
David happened to say something about one of his 
beloved books. Peregrine Pickle ; and that night when 
they were going to bed Steerforth asked him if he had 
that book with him. 


6o 


DAVID COPPERFIELD 


David said no, and explained how he had come to 
read it, and all those other dear books which he had 
found in that little upstairs room next his. 

‘ And do you recollect them ? * Steerforth asked. 

David thought he did. 

‘Then I’ll tell you what, young Copperfield, you 
shall tell ’em to me. I can’t get to sleep very early 
at night, and I generally wake rather early in the 
morning. We ’ll go over ’em one after another. We ’ll 
make some regular Arabian Nights of it. 

David felt very much flattered, and began on 
Peregrine Pickle that very evening, after they were 
in bed. He didn’t like being roused out of sleep in the 
mornings to go on with the story, but Steerforth kept 
him at it with the greatest zest ; and David admired 
him so much that he would not have disappointed him 
for the world. 

And one day Peggotty’s promised letter came at last 
—such a comfortable letter, just like Peggotty! And 
with it a cake, a lot of oranges, and two bottles of 
cowslip wine. 

These treasures David, as in duty bound, laid at 
Steerforth’s feet, and begged him to serve them 
round. 

‘ Now I ’ll tell you what, young Copperfield,’ said he, 
‘ the wine shall be kept to wet your whistle when you ’re 
story-telling.* 

David tried to object; but Steerforth was firm. He 
had observed, he said, that David was ‘ a little roopy,’ 


SCHOOL LIFE 6i 

and declared that every drop of the wine should be 
kept for him. 

So Steerforth locked the bottles up in his own box, 
and used to draw a little in a phial whenever David 
became ‘roopy.* Sometimes he squeezed orange juice 
into it for a change, or stirred it up with ginger, or 
dissolved a peppermint drop in it; and David drank 
it very gratefully, and was very sensible of his attention. 

David told the stories very well, because he believed 
in them so earnestly himself. He was the youngest 
boy in that bedroom too, and for that very reason, 
perhaps, the bo3rs thought more of this accomplish- 
ment of his. The whole school gradually got to 
know of it, and David was a good deal noticed in 
consequence. 

The old placard had been taken off his back by this— 
not from any consideration of David’s feelings; Mr. 
Creakle found it in his way when he came suddenly 
behind the form where David sat, and wanted to make 
a cut at him when passing ; for this reason it was taken 
off one day, and never put on again. 

Mr. Mell, too, got a liking for him, and did his best 
to teach him very carefully. Unfortunately, David, 
who could not have kept a secret from Steerforth for 
the world, told his hero once about the old woman 
whom Mr. Mell had taken him to see at the almshouse 
that first morning. He little guessed what the conse- 
quence would be. 

Mr. Creakle was ill one day, and couldn’t come to 


62 


DAVID COPPERFIELD 


the schoolroom. The boys became so lively at the 
news, that it was very hard to keep them in order 
that morning. Tungay stumped in with his wooden 
leg, and took down the names of the principal 
offenders; but they were so sure of getting punished 
to-morrow that they thought they would enjoy them- 
selves to-day. 

They became worse in the afternoon— it happened to 
be Saturday afternoon, which was generally a half 
holiday; but as Mr. Creakle could not bear the noise 
of the boys rushing about the playground, and the 
day being too wet for walking out, they were ordered 
into the schoolroom to do a few light tasks, under the 
care of Mr. Mell. Mr. Sharp had gone out to get his 
wig curled. 

The boys were so rowdy that poor Mr. Mell, who was 
a quiet, mild man, had the utmost difficulty in keeping 
order. The noise was fearful. 

He leaned his aching head on his hand and tried to 
get on with his tiresome work as well as he could. 

Boys started in and out of their places, playing at 
puss-in-the-corner with the other boys; there were 
laughing boys, singing boys, talking boys, howling 
boys ; boys shuffled with their feet, boys whirled 
about him, grinning, making faces, mimicking him 
behind his back and before his eyes; mimicking his 
poverty, his boots, his coat, his mother; everything 
belonging to him that they should have had considera- 
tion for. 


SCHOOL LIFE 


63 

‘Silence!* cried Mr. Mell, sudaenly rising up, and 
striking the desk with his book. ‘What does this 
mean? It is impossible to bear it It’s maddening. 
How can you do it to me, boys?* 

It was David’s book that he struck the desk with ; 
and David was standing by his side. 

All the boys stopped, some suddenly surprised, some 
half afraid, some sorry, perhaps. 

Steerforth’s place was at the bottom of the school, 
at the opposite side of the long room. He was loung- 
ing with his back against the wall, and his hands in 
his pockets, and looked at Mr. Mell with his mouth 
shut up as if he were whistling, when Mr. Mell looked 
at him. 

‘Silence, Steerforthl* said Mr. Mell. 

‘ Silence yourself,* said Steerforth, very red. ‘ Whom 
are you talking to ? * 

‘ Sit down,* said Mr. Mell. 

‘ Sit down yourself,* said Steerforth, ‘ and mind your 
own business.* 

Some of the boys tittered; some applauded; but 
Mr. Mell grew so white that silence immediately 
succeeded. 

‘ If you think, Steerforth,* said Mr. Mell, ‘ that I am 
not acquainted with the power you can stretch over any 
mind here ; or that I have not observed you, within a 
few minutes, urging your juniors on to every sort of 
outrage against me ; you are mistaken.* 

‘I don’t give myself the trouble of thinking at all 


DAVID COPPERFIELD 


64 

about you/ said Steerforth, who was proud of his own 
position, and looked down on Mr. Mell: ‘so I am not 
mistaken, as it happens.’ 

‘And when you make use of your position of 
favouritism here. Sir,* went on Mr. Mell, with his lip 
trembling very much, ‘ to insult a gentleman—’ 

‘ A what ? Where is he ? ’ cried Steerforth. 

Here somebody cried out, ‘Shame, J. Steerforth I 
Too bad ! ’ It was Traddles. 

‘—To insult one who is not fortunate in life. Sir, 
and who never gave you the least offence,’ said Mr. 
Mell, with his lips trembling more and more, ‘you 
commit a mean and base action. You can sit down 
or stand up as you please. Sir. Copperfield, go on.’ 

‘Young Copperfield,’ said Steerforth, coming forward 
up the room, ‘stop a bit. I tell you what, Mr. Mell, 
once for all. When you take the liberty of calling me 
mean or base, or anything of that sort, you are an im- 
pudent beggar. You are always a beggar, you know ; 
but when you do that, you are an impudent beggar.’ 

Suddenly the whole school looked as if they had 
been turned into stone; and there was Mr. Creakle 
in the midst of them, with Tungay at his side, and 
Mrs. and Miss Creakle looking in at the door, as if 
they were frightened. Mr. Mell, with his elbows on 
his desk, and his face in his hands, sat, for some 
minutes, quite still. 

‘Mr. Mell,’ said Mr. Creakle, shaking him by the 
arm ; ‘ you have not forgotten yourself, I hope.’ 


SCHOOL LIFE 


65 

* No, Sir, no,’ returned the master, showing his face, 
and rubbing his hands in his great agitation. ‘ No, Sir, 
no. I have remembered myself. I could wish you had 
remembered me a little sooner, Mr. Creakle. It— it 
would have been more kind. Sir, more just. Sir. It 
would have saved me something. Sir.’ 

Mr. Creakle, looking hard at him, put his hand on 
Tungay’s shoulder, and got his feet upon the form close 
by, and sat upon the desk ; and, turning to Steerforth, 
said : ‘ Now, Sir, as he don’t condescend to tell me, what 
is this ? ’ 

Steerforth evaded the question for a little while, and 
said at length, ‘What did he mean by talking of 
favourites, then ? ’ 

‘Favourites?’ repeated Mr. Creakle, with the veins 
in his forehead swelling quickly, ‘who talked about 
favourites ? ’ 

‘ He did,’ said Steerforth. 

‘And pray, what did you mean by that. Sir?’ 
demanded Mr. Creakle, turning angrily on his 
assistant. 

‘ I meant, Mr. Creakle,’ he returned in a low voice, 
‘ as I said ; that no pupil had a right to avail himself of 
his position of favouritism to degrade me.’ 

‘ To degrade you ? My stars 1 But give me leave to 
ask you, Mr. What ’s-your-name, whether when you 
talk of favouritism you show proper respect to me ? To 
me. Sir, the principal of the establishment, and your 
employer ? ’ 


E 


66 


DAVID COPPERFIELD 


‘ It was not judicious, Sir, I am willing to admit,* 
said Mr. Mell. ‘ I should not have done so, if I had 
been cool.* 

Here Steerforth struck in. 

' Then he said I was mean, and then he said I was 
base, and then I called him a beggar. If / had been 
cool, perhaps I should not have called him a beggar. 
But I did, and I am ready to take the consequences of it* 

‘ I am surprised, Steerforth— although your candour 
does you honour,’ said Mr. Creakle, ‘ does you honour, 
certainly— I am surprised, Steerforth, I must say, that 
you should attacH such an epithet to any person 
employed and paid in Salem House, Sir.* 

Steerforth gave a short laugh. 

‘That’s not an answer. Sir,’ said Mr. Creakle, ‘to 
my remark.’ 

‘ Let him deny it,’ said Steerforth. 

‘Deny that he is a beggar, Steerforth?’ cried Mr. 
Creakle, ‘ why, where does he go a-begging ? * 

‘ If he ’s not a beggar himself, his near relation ’s one. 
It ’s all the same.’ 

Steerforth glanced at David, and Mr. Mell’s hand 
patted David gently upon the shoulder. David looked 
up with a flush upon his face and remorse in his heart ; 
but Mr. M ell’s eyes were fixed on Steerforth. 

‘Since you expect me, Mr. Creakle, to justify myself,* 
said Steerforth, ‘ and to say what I mean— what I have 
to say is, that his mother lives on charity in an alms- 
house.* 


SCHOOL LIFE 


67 

Mr. Mell still looked at him, and still patted David 
kindly on the shoulder, and said to himself in a 
whisper, ‘Yes, I thought so.* 

Mr. Creakle turned to his assistant with a severe 
frown : ‘ Now you hear what this gentleman says, Mr. 
Mell. Have the goodness, if you please, to set him 
right before the whole school.’ 

‘ He is Hght, without correction,’ returned Mr. Mell, 
in the midst of a dead silence ; ‘ what he has said is 
true.’ 

‘ Be so good as to declare publicly,’ said Mr. Creakle, 
‘whether it ever came to my knowledge until this 
moment.’ 

‘ I apprehend you never supposed my worldly circum- 
stances to be very good,’ said Mr. Mell; ‘you know 
what my position is, and always has been here.’ 

‘ I apprehend, if you come to that,’ said Mr. Creakle, 
with his veins swelling again bigger than ever, ‘ that 
you ’ve been in a wrong position altogether, and mis- 
took this for a charity school. Mr. Mell, we ’ll part, if 
you please. The sooner the better.’ 

‘There is no time,’ said Mr. Mell, rising, ‘like the 
present.’ 

‘Sir, to you 1 ’ said Mr. Creakle. 

‘ I take my leave of you, Mr. Creakle, and all of you,’ 
said Mr. Mell, glancing round the room, and again 
patting David on the shoulder. ‘James Steerforth, the 
best wish I can leave you is that you may come to be 
ashamed of what you have done to-day. At present 


68 


DAVID COPPERFIELD 


I would rather see you anything than a friend, to me, 
or to any one I feel an interest in.’ 

Once more he laid his hand on David’s shoulder; 
and taking his flute and a few books from his desk, 
and leaving the key in it for his successor, he went out 
of the school with his property under his arm. 

Mr. Creakle, who was inclined to cringe to Steerforth 
on account of his position and wealth, then made a 
speech thanking Steerforth for upholding the respect- 
ability of Salem House, and told the boys to give three 
cheers for him. 

Mr. Creakle then caned Tommy Traddles for crying 
at Mr. Mell’s departure, instead of cheering for Steer- 
forth ; and went back to his bed on his sofa, or wher- 
ever he had come from. 

The boys were left to themselves, and looked blankly 
at each other. David could have cried, but that he 
feared it would offend Steerforth. Steerforth was very 
angry with Traddles, and said he was glad he had 
caught it. 

Traddles said he didn’t care. Mr. Mell was ill-used. 

‘Who has ill-used him, you girl?’ said Steerforth, 
feeling a little ashamed, but much too proud to own it. 

‘Why, you have.’ 

‘ What have I done ? ’ said Steerforth. 

‘Whatever have you done?* retorted Traddles. 
‘ Hurt his feelings, and lost him his situation.’ 

‘ His feelings will soon get the better of it, I ’ll be 
bound,* said Steerforth. ‘His feelings are not like 


SCHOOL LIFE 


69 

yours, Miss Traddles. As to his situation— which was 
a precious one, wasn’t it ?— do you suppose I am not 
going to write home, and take care that he gets some 
money, Polly?’ 

The boys thought this very noble of Steerforth, whose 
mother was a rich widow, and would do almost any- 
thing for her son, it was said, that he asked her. 

But that night David thought of the old flute, and 
wondered whether Mr. Mell was playing sorrowfully 
somewhere, and felt very wretched indeed. 

The new master came from a grammar school ; and 
Steerforth declared him to be a brick ; but he never 
took the pains with David that Mr. Mell did. 


CHAPTER VIII 


VISITORS FOR DAVID 

One afternoon, when Mr. Creakle was laying about him 
dreadfully, Tungay came in, and called out, ‘Visitors 
for Copperfield ! * 

David stood up, quite faint with astonishment, and 
was told to go by the back stairs to get a clean frill on 
before going into the dining-room. 

He wondered whether it was his mother, and went 
to the door quite in a flutter, and had to stop a sob 
before he went in. 

It was Mr. Peggotty and Ham. 

They stood ducking at him with their hats, and 
squeezing one another against the wall. David 
laughed at the pleasure of seeing them again, and they 
all shook hands very cordially; but tears were very 
near the laughter too, and David, though he still 
laughed, pulled his handkerchief out and wiped his 
eyes ; he was so much overcome at the sight of them. 

Mr. Peggotty nudged Ham to say something. 

So Ham began, ‘ Cheer up, Mas’r Davy bor’ I Why, 
how you have growed 1 ’ 

TO 



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VISITORS FOR DAVID 


71 


‘ Am I grown ? ’ said David. 

‘ Growed, Mas’r Davy bor’ ? Ain’t he growed ! ’ said 
Ham. 

‘Ain’t he growed ! ’ said Mr. Peggotty. 

* Do you know how mamma is, Mr. Peggotty ? And 
how my dear, dear old Peggotty is ? * 

‘Oncommon,’ said Mr. Peggotty. 

‘And little Em’ly, and Mrs. Gummidge?* 

‘ On— common,’ said Mr. Peggotty. 

There was a silence. Mr. Peggotty, to relieve it, 
took two prodigious lobsters, and an enormous crab, 
and a large canvas bag of shrimps out of his pockets, 
and piled them up in Ham’s arms. 

‘You see,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘ knowing as you was 
partial to a little relish with your wittles when you was 
along with us, we took the liberty. The old mawther 
biled ’em. Yes,’ said Mr. Peggotty, because he had 
nothing else to say just then, ‘ Mrs. Gummidge, I do 
assure you, she biled ’em.’ 

David thanked him heartily. 

*We come, you see,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘the wind 
and tide making in our favour, in one of our Yarmouth 
lugs to Gravesen’. My sister she wrote to me the 
name of this here place, and wrote to me as if ever I 
chanced to come to Gravesen’, I was to come over and 
inquire for Mas’r Davy, and give her dooty, humbly 
wishing him well, and reporting of the fam’ly as they 
was oncommon toe-be-sure. Little Em’ly, you see, 
she ’ll write to my sister when I go back, as I see you. 


DAVID COPPERFIELD 


72 

and as you was similarly oncommon, and so we make 
it quite a merry-go-rounder.* 

David thanked him again, and asked if little Em’ly 
was altered. 

‘She’s getting to be a woman, that’s wot she’s 
getting to be,’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘ Ask him.’ 

He meant Ham, who beamed with delight and assent 
over the bag of shrimps. 

‘Her pretty face I’ said Mr. Peggotty, with his own 
shining like a light. 

‘ Her learning ! ’ said Ham. 

‘Her writing!’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘Why it’s as 
black as jet. And so large it is, you might see it any- 
wheres.’ 

He was going to say more about his little favourite, 
when Steerforth suddenly looked in, and, stopping in a 
song he was singing, said : ‘ I didn’t know you were 
here, young Copperfieldl’ (for it was not the usual 
visiting-room) and crossed by on his way out. 

David, partly to show off his fine friend, Steerforth, 
and partly to explain to Steerforth how he came to 
have such visitors as these rough boatmen, called out, 
‘Don’t go, Steerforth, if you please. These are two 
Yarmouth boatmen— very kind, good people— who are 
relations of my nurse, and have come from Gravesend 
to see me.’ 

‘ Ay, ay,’ said Steerforth, returning. ‘ I am glad to 
see them. How are you both ? ’ 

There was an ease in his manner— a gay and light 


VISITORS FOR DAVID 


73 

manner it was, but not swaggering, added to his 
delightful voice, his handsome face and figrure, which 
seemed to carry a spell with him, and which not many 
persons trould withstand. Mr. Peggotty and Ham 
were at home with him at once. David told them in a 
few words how kind Steerforth was to him. 

‘ Nonsense !* said Steerforth, laughing. 

‘And if Mr. Steerforth ever comes into Norfolk or 
Suffolk, Mr. Peggotty,* said David, ‘ while I am there, 
you may depend upon it I shall bring him to Yarmouth, 
if he will let me, to see your house. You never saw 
such a good house, Steerforth. It’s made out of a 
boat!’ 

‘Made out of a boat, is it?’ said Steerforth. ‘It’s 
the right sort of a house for such a thorough-built 
boatman 1 ’ 

‘So ’tis. Sir, so ’tis. Sir,’ said Ham,'grinning. ‘You ’re 
right, young gen’lm’n. Mas’r Davy, bor*, gen’lm’n is 
right. A thorough-built boatman I Hor! horl That’s 
what he is too 1 ’ 

And Mr. Peggotty said, chuckling, and tucking in 
the ends of his neckerchief at his breast, ‘ I thankee. 
Sir, I thankee I I do my endeavours in my line of life. 
Sir.’ 

‘The best of men can do no more, Mr. Peggotty,’ 
said Steerforth, who had got his name already. 

‘I’ll pound it’s wot you do yourself. Sir,’ said Peggotty, 
‘ and wot you do well — right well ! I thankee. Sir.’ 

And Mr. Peggotty wound up with an invitation to 


DAVID COPPERFIELD 


74 

Steerforth to come and see him some day ‘along 
with Mas’r Davy,’ and wished them both well and 
happy. 

Ham echoed his uncle’s wish, and the boys parted 
with them, in the heartiest manner ; and then carried 
the shell-fish up into the bedroom unobserved, where 
they made a great supper that evening. 

Poor Traddles ate too much crab, and was taken 
ill in the night; so ill, that he had to be drugged 
with black draughts and blue pills ; and got a caning 
next day, with six chapters of Greek Testament for 
refusing to confess what he had eaten to make him 
sick. 

And so the first half-year of David’s school life passed 
away, and holidays loomed nearer and nearer. He 
began to be afraid that Mr. Murdstone would not let 
him go home for them ; but his fear was turned to joy 
at last, and one glad day he found himself inside the 
Yarmouth mail, and going home. 

The coach stopped at Yarmouth ; but not at the old 
hotel where the waiter had helped him with his chops 
and pudding. The hotel was called the Dolphin, and 
David was shown up into a nice little bedroom for the 
night ; and Barkis the carrier was to call for him in the 
morning. 

Barkis received him as if he had parted with him 
only five minutes ago, and as soon as the box and 
David were in the cart, the lazy horse walked off at his 
accustomed pace. 


VISITORS FOR DAVID 


75 

‘You look very well, Mr. Barkis,’ said David. ‘ I gave 
your message. I wrote to Peggotty.* 

* Ah ! ’ ^said Mr. Barkis. He seemed gruff, and 
answered drily. 

‘Wasn’t it right, Mr. Barkis?’ asked David after a 
little hesitation. 

‘ Why, no,’ said Barkis. 

‘ Not the message ? ’ 

‘The message was right enough, perhaps,’ said 
Barkis, ‘ but it come to a end there.’ 

‘ Come to an end, Mr. Barkis ? ’ 

‘ Nothing come of it,’ Barkis explained, looking side- 
ways at David. ‘ No answer.’ 

‘There was an answer expected, was there, Mr. 
Barkis ? ’ asked David, opening his eyes. 

‘When a man says he ’s willin,’ said Barkis, ‘it’s as 
much as to say that man ’s a waitin’ for an answer.’ 

‘Well, Mr. Barkis?’ 

‘ Well,’ said Barkis, looking at the horse’s ears ; ‘ that 
man ’s been a-waitin’ for a answer ever since.’ 

‘ Have you told her so, Mr. Barkis?’ 

‘ N— no,’ growled the carrier, reflecting. ‘ I ain’t got 
no call to go and tell her so. I never said six words 
to her myself. / ain’t goin’ to tell her so. 

‘ Would you like me to do it, Mr. Barkis,’ said David 
doubtfully. 

‘ You might tell her, if you would,’ said Barkis, ‘ that 
Barkis was a waitin’ for a answer. Says you — what 
name is it ? ’ 


DAVID COPPERFIELD 


76 

‘ Her name ? * 

* Ah I * said Barkis with a nod of his head. 

* Peggotty.* 

* Chrisen name ? Or nat’ral name ? ’ 

*Ohl it’s not her Christian name. Her Christian 
name is Clara.* 

*Is it, though?’ said Barkis. He pondered a good 
while on this circumstance, and resumed at length. 
‘ Says you, “ Peggotty, Barkis is a- waitin’ for a answer.” 
Says she, perhaps, “ Answer to what ? ” Says you, “ To 
what I told you.” “ What is that ? ” says she. “ Barkis 
is willin’,” says you.’ 

At that the carter gave David a nudge with his elbow 
in the side, and slouching over his horse as usual, made 
no other reference to the subject. But half an hour 
after, he took a piece of chalk from his pocket, and 
wrote up, inside the tilt of his cart, ‘ Clara Peggotty.’ 

And now the old house is in sight, where the tall elm 
trees swing their naked branches in the wintry air, and 
shreds of the old rooks’ nests drift away upon the 
wind. 

The carrier put his box down at the garden gate, 
and left him ; and David walked along the old path, 
glancing up at the windows, and fearing at every step 
to see Mr. or Miss Murdstone looking out of one of 
them. 


CHAPTER IX 


JUST LIKE OLD TIMES 

He reached the door, and turned the handle without 
waiting to knock, and went in with a quiet, timid step. 
He heard a low voice singing in the parlour ; it was his 
mother’s voice ; and the tune she sang sounded like an 
old song she used to sing when David was a baby. 

He looked into the room. She didn’t see him. She 
was sitting by the fire with a baby in her arms, whose 
tiny hand she held against her cheek. Her eyes were 
looking down upon its face. And there was nobody 
else in the room. 

David spoke, and then she started, and seeing him, 
she called him her dear Davy, her own boy! And 
coming half across the room to meet him, kneeled 
down upon the ground and kissed him, and laid his 
head on her bosom, near the little creature that was 
nestling there, and put its hand up to his lips. 

‘ He is your brother,’ she said, fondling David. ‘ Davy, 
my pretty boy 1 My poor child I ’ Then she kissed him 
more and more, and clasped him round the neck, when 
Peggotty came running in, and bounced down on the 
ground beside them, and went mad about them for a 
quarter of an hour. 

7T 


DAVID COPPERFIELD 


78 

It was as if the dear old days were back again. David 
had arrived earlier than they had expected, and Mr. 
and Miss Murdstone were out upon a visit, and would 
not be home till night. 

Oh ! it was a happy time. They dined together by 
the fireside with Peggotty in attendance to wait on 
them ; but the mother wouldn’t let her do it, and made 
her sit down and eat her dinner with them. David had 
his old plate, with a man-of-war in full sail upon it, which 
Peggotty had hoarded away, and would not have had 
broken, she said, for a hundred pounds. There was his 
old mug with * David ’ on it, and his old little knife and 
fork that wouldn’t cut. 

And while they ate their dinner and were happy, 
David began to tell Peggotty about Mr. Barkis, and 
before she had finished, she began to laugh, and threw 
her apron over her head. 

‘ Peggotty ! * said David’s mother, ‘ what *s the 
matter ? ’ 

Peggotty only laughed the more, and held her apron 
tight over her face when the mother tried to pull it 
away. 

‘What are you doing, you stupid creature?’ said 
David’s mother, laughing too. 

‘Oh ! drat the man !’ cried Peggotty. ‘ He wants to 
marry me.’ 

‘ It would be a very good match for you, wouldn’t it ? ’ 
said David’s mother. 

‘ Oh ! I don’t know,’ said Peggotty. ‘ Don’t ask me. 


JUST LIKE OLD TIMES 79 

I wouldn’t have him if he was made of gold. Nor I 
wouldn’t have anybody.’ 

‘Then why don’t you tell him so, you ridiculous 
thing?’ 

‘Tell him so? ’ retorted Peggotty, looking out of her 
apron. ‘ He has never said a word to me about it. He 
knows better. If he was to make so bold as say a word 
to me, I should slap his face ! ’ 

Her own face was very red, and every now and then 
she laughed heartily. 

David, looking at his mother, saw that though she 
smiled when Peggotty looked at her, she became very 
serious and thoughtful. Her face was still pretty, but 
it looked careworn and delicate, and she looked at 
Peggotty in an anxious, fluttered way ; and putting out 
her hand, and laying it affectionately on the hand of her 
old servant, she said, ‘ Peggotty dear, you are not going 
to be married ? * 

‘ Me, ma’am ? Lord bless you, no ! * 

‘ Not just yet,’ said the mother tenderly. 

‘ Never,’ cried Peggotty. 

‘Don’t leave me, Peggotty,’ she said, taking her 
hand. ‘ Stay with me. It will not be for long, perhaps. 
What should I ever do without you ?/ 

‘ Me leave you, my precious ? ’ cried Peggotty. ‘ Not 
for all the world and his wife. Why, what ’s put that 
into your silly little head ? * 

The mother didn’t answer except to thank her, and 
Peggotty went on : 


8o 


DAVID COPPERFIELD 


‘Me leave you! I think I see myself. No, no, my 
dear! Peggotty go away from you? Not she, my 
dear. It isn’t as there ain’t some Cats that would be 
well enough pleased if she did, but they shan’t be 
pleased. They shall be aggravated. I’ll stay with 
you till I ’m a cross, cranky old woman. And when I ’m 
too old to be of use to any one, I shall go to my Davy, 
and ask him to take me in.* 

‘And I shall be glad to see you,* said David; ‘and 
I ’ll make you as welcome as a queen.* 

‘ Bless you ! dear heart,* said Peggotty kissing him. 
‘ I know you will.* And then she took the baby out of 
its cradle and nursed it; and then she cleared the 
table, and then she came in with another cap, and 
her work-box, and they all sat round the fire and 
talked delightfully. 

David told them what a hard master Mr. Creakle 
was, and they pitied him very much. And he told 
them all about Steerforth, and Peggotty said she 
would walk a score of miles to see him. And when 
the baby was awake David took him in his arms 
and nursed him lovingly; and when it was asleep 
again, he crept up to his mother’s side with his arm 
around her waist, and his cheek upon her shoulder, 
and felt once more her beautiful hair drooping over 
him just like an angel’s wing. 

It seemed as if he had never been away ; and that 
there were no such persons as Mr. and Miss 
Murdstone in the world. 


8i 


JUST LIKE OLD TIMES 

It was a happy time, indeed. 

‘I wonder,* said Peggotty suddenly, ‘what’s become 
of Davy’s great aunt ? ’ 

‘What nonsense you talk, Peggotty,’ said David’s 
mother, rousing herself from a reverie. 

* Well, but I really do wonder, ma’am,’ said Peggotty. 

* What can have put such a person into your head ? 
Miss Betsey is shut up in her cottage by the sea, no 
doubt, and will remain there,’ said David’s mother 
‘ At all events, she is not likely ever to trouble us again.’ 

‘No I’ mused Peggotty. ‘No. That ain’t likely at 
all — I wonder, if she was to die, whether she’d leave 
Davy anything ? ’ 

‘ Good gracious me, Peggotty ! What a nonsensical 
woman you are! When you know that she took 
offence at the poor dear boy’s ever being born at all 1 ’ 

For you may remember how Miss Betsey marched 
out of the house when she heard that the baby was a 
boy, and never came back again. 

By and by they had their tea, and the fire was made 
up and the candles snuffed ; and David told them 
more about Salem House, and a good deal more 
about Steerforth ; and it was nearly ten o’clock before 
they heard the sound of wheels. 

They all got up then, and David’s mother said 
hurriedly, that it was so late that David had perhaps 
better go to bed. So he kissed her and went upstairs 
with his candle directly, before the Murdstones came 
in; and as he climbed the stairs he fancied the 


F 


82 


DAVID COPPERFIELD 


Murdstones brought a blast of cold air into the house 
with them, which blew away the old familiar feeling. 

David was uncomfortable about going down to 
breakfast next morning, as he had never set eyes on 
Mr. Murdstone since he had bitten him that never-to- 
be-forgotten day. 

But he had to go down, and found Mr. Murdstone 
standing with his back to the fire, while Miss 
Murdstone made the tea. 

Mr. Murdstone looked at David as if he didn’t 
know who he was ; but the look was cold and steady. 

David felt confused; but going up to him he said, 
‘ I beg your pardon. Sir. I am very sorry for what I 
did, and I hope you will forgive me.’ 

‘I am glad you are sorry, David,’ he replied; and 
gave him the hand that David had bitten. He saw 
the scar upon it. 

David grew very red, and said, ‘How do you do, 
ma’am?’ to Miss Murdstone. 

‘Ah, dear me!’ sighed Miss Murdstone, giving 
him the tea-caddy scoop to shake instead of her 
fingers. * How long are the holidays ? * 

‘ A month, ma’am.’ 

‘ Counting from when ? ’ 

‘From to-day, ma’am.’ 

‘Ah I’ said Miss Murdstone. ‘Then there’s one 
day off.’ 

She was very angry when she saw David later on 
with the baby in his arms; she was sure he would 


JUST LIKE OLD TIMES 83 

let it fall; and told his mother he must never carry 
the baby again. And she was still more angry when 
the mother said that the baby’s eyes were just like 
David’s ; and she stalked out of the room and banged 
the door. 

The holidays, of course, were not very happy ones. 
How could they be with the Murdstones there? 
David felt that his mother was afraid to speak to 
him, or to be kind to him in their presence, lest she 
should give them offence somehow; so he used to 
steal into the kitchen to sit with Peggotty, where he 
never felt in the way. 

But Mr. Murdstone objected to that. 

‘ I am sorry to observe,’ he said, ‘ that you have an 
attachment to low and common company. You are 
not to associate with servants. The kitchen will not 
improve you.’ 

Oh I the weary hours he passed in the parlour, day 
after day, afraid to move a leg or an arm lest Miss 
Murdstone should complain of his restlessness ! 

What walks he took alone, down muddy lanes in 
the bad winter weather to get away from their 
presence I What a relief it was to hear Miss 
Murdstone hail the first stroke of nine at night, and 
order him off to bed I 

He was not sorry when the holidays were over; 
he was looking forward to seeing Steerforth again. 
He was not sorry when Barkis appeared at the gate 
and carried his box into the cart. 


DAVID COPPERFIELD 


84 

He kissed his mother and his baby brother, and 
felt a little sorry then. She pressed him to her; but 
Miss Murdstone was there, and then she had to let 
him go. 

But when he was in the cart and it was moving 
away, he heard her calling him. He looked out, and 
she was standing at the garden gate alone, holding 
up the baby in her arms for him to see. 

It was cold, still weather; and not a hair of her 
head, or a fold of her dress, was stirred, as she looked 
intently at him, holding up the child. 

David never saw her again. 


CHAPTER X 


A MEMORABLE BIRTHDAY 

He had been at school just two months when his 
birthday came round again. A fog hung about the 
place, and there was hoarfrost on the ground — a 
bitter, raw, cold March morning. 

Breakfast was over and the boys had been called 
in from the playground when Mr. Sharp entered the 
schoolroom and said, ‘ David Copperfield is to go into 
the parlour.* 

David’s heart gave a bound. He was expecting 
a birthday hamper from Peggotty. And the boys had 
told him not to forget them when the good things 
came, for they knew what he was looking forward for. 
He jumped up very readily. 

‘Don’t hurry, David,’ said Mr. Sharp, in an un- 
usually soft tone. ‘There’s time enough, my boy, 
don’t hurry.’ 

But David did hurry into the parlour, where Mr. 
Creakle was sitting at breakfast with the cane and 
a newspaper before him. David didn’t see the hamper. 
‘David Copperfield,’ said Mrs. Creakle, taking him 

to a sofa, and sitting down beside him, *I want to 

86 


86 


DAVID COPPERFIELD 


speak to you very particularly. 1 have something 
to tell you, my child.’ 

Mr. Creakle shook his head, and stopped up a sigh 
with a very large piece of buttered toast. 

‘You are too young to know how the world changes 
every day,’ said Mrs. Creakle, ‘and how the people 
in it pass away. But we all have to learn it, David ; 
some of us when we are young, some of us when we 
are old, some of us at all times of our lives.’ 

David looked at her earnestly. 

‘When you came away from home at the end of 
the vacation,’ said Mrs. Creakle, after a pause, ‘were 
they all well ? ’ And after another pause, ‘ Was your 
mamma well ? ’ 

A mist seemed to arise between David and Mrs. 
Creakle. He felt burning tears in his eyes. 

‘ She is very dangerously ill,’ she said. 

David knew what was coming. 

‘ She is dead,’ said Mrs. Creakle. 

He gave out a desolate cry, and felt an orphan in 
the wide, wide world. 

Mrs. Creakle was very kind to him. She kept him 
in the parlour all day, and left him alone sometimes. 
He cried and wore himself to sleep, and awoke and 
cried again; and there was a dull weight on his 
breast ; and he thought of her as he had seen her last 
—holding up the baby at the gate. 

He thought of the house shut up and hushed ; and of 
the little baby who, Mrs. Creakle said, had been pining 


A MEMORABLE BIRTHDAY 87 

away for some time, and who, they believed, would die 
too ; and he thought about going home, for they had 
sent for him to attend the funeral. 

He walked that afternoon in the playground while 
the other boys were in school ; and they had no story- 
telling that night in the bedroom, and Traddles in- 
sisted on lending him his pillow, although he had one 
of his own. 

He left Salem House the next afternoon ; and left it 
never to return ; but he did not know that then. 

He looked out for Barkis’s familiar face at Yarmouth ; 
but a short, merry-looking little old man in black, 
came puffing up to the coach window and said, ‘ Master 
Copperfield ? ’ 

‘ Yes, Sir.* 

‘ Will you come with me, young Sir, if you please,’ he 
said, opening the door ; ‘ and I shall have the pleasure 
of taking you home.’ 

And David, wondering who he was, walked away 
with him to a shop, on which was written Omer, 
Draper, Tailor, Haberdasher, Funeral Fur- 
nisher, etc. 

Mr. Omer had taken him there to have him measured 
for a suit of mourning, and after that he drove him to 
Blunderstone. 

He was in Peggotty’s arms before he got to the 
door, and she took him into the house. She cried 
very much, and spoke in whispers, and walked softly, 
as if the dead could be disturbed. The little baby 


88 DAVID COPPERFIELD 

was dead too, and they had put him in his mother’s 
arms. 

Mr. Murdstone did not heed him when he went 
into the parlour, but sat over the fire with red eyes. 
Miss Murdstone gave him her finger nails to shake — 
she was very busy writing letters — and asked him 
in an iron whisper if he had been measured for his 
mourning. 

She wrote all day, and seemed to take a pleasure 
in her firmness, and her strength of mind ; and never 
relaxed a muscle of her face, nor softened a tone of 
her voice. 

Mr. Murdstone took a book sometimes to read, but 
would remain a whole hour without turning a leaf, 
and then would put it down, and walk restlessly to 
and fro. 

In these days before the funeral David saw but little 
of Peggotty ; but at night she always came to him and 
sat by his bed till he fell asleep. 

And after the funeral— that sad day that David never 
forgot— she went with him up to his little room, and sat 
with him on his little bed, and, holding his hand, told 
him all there was to tell. 

* She was never well,’ said Peggotty, ‘ for a long while. 
I think she got to be more timid, and more frightened- 
like of late ; and that a hard word was like a blow to 
her. But she was always the same to me. She never 
changed to her foolish Peggotty, didn’t my sweet girl. 
The last time that I saw her like her own old self was the 


A MEMORABLE BIRTHDAY 89 

night when you came home, my dear. The day you 
went away, she said to me, “I shall never see my 
pretty darling again. Something tells me so, that 
tells me the truth, I know. God protect and keep my 
fatherless boy.” 

‘I never left her afterwards,* said Peggotty. ‘She 
often talked to them two downstairs — for she loved 
them ; she couldn’t bear not to love any one who was 
about her — but when they went away from her bed- 
side, she always turned to me, as if there was rest 
where Peggotty was, and never fell asleep in any 
other way. 

‘ On the last night, in the evening, she kissed me, and 
said, “ Let my dearest boy go with me to my resting- 
place, and tell him that his mother, when she lay here, 
blessed him not once, but a thousand times. . . . 
Peggotty, my dear, put me nearer to you ” ; for she was 
very weak. “ Lay your good arm underneath my neck,” 
she said, “ and turn me to you, for your face is going far 
off, and I want it to be near.” I put it as she asked ; 
and O Davyl the time had come when she was glad 
to lay her poor head on her stupid, cross old Peggotty’s 
arm— and she died like a child that had gone to sleep ! ’ 

From that time David remembered her only as the 
young mother who had been used to wind her bright 
curls round and round her finger, and to dance with 
him at twilight in the parlour. In her death she winged 
her way back to her calm, untroubled youth, and 
cancelled all the rest. 


CHAPTER XI 


PEGGOTTY’S WEDDING 

The first act of business that Miss Murdstone per- 
formed when the day of the funeral was over, was to 
give Peggotty a month’s warning. As to David’s future, 
not a word was said, nor a step taken. Once he mus- 
tered courage to ask Miss Murdstone when he was 
going back to school, and she answered drily that she 
believed he was not going back at all. 

Neither of the Murdstones wanted him in the 
parlour, so he spent the time with Peggotty; and 
Mr. Murdstone didn’t seem to care as long as he 
didn’t bother him. 

‘Davy,’ said Peggotty one day, ‘I have tried, my 
dear, all ways I could think of to get a suitable service 
here in Blunderstone, but there is no such thing, my 
love.’ 

‘And what do you mean to do, Peggotty?’ he asked 
wistfully ; for Peggotty was the only friend he had in 
the world now ; and he clung to her. 

‘ I expect I shall be forced to go to Yarmouth,* replied 
Peggotty, ‘ and live there.* 

‘You might have gone further off,* said David 

90 


PEGGOTTY’S WEDDING 91 

brightening, ‘and been as bad as lost. I shall see 
you sometimes, my dear old Peggotty, there. You 
won’t be quite at the other end of the world, will you ? ’ 

‘Contrary ways, please God!* cried Peggotty. ‘As 
long as you are here, my pet, I shall come over every 
week of my life to see you. One day every week of my 
life!’ 

And then she told him how she would go to her 
brother’s first, till she had time to look about her for 
another situation. And then she said that, perhaps, 
as nobody seemed to want David there, they might 
let him go to Yarmouth with her for a while; and 
later on made so bold as to suggest this to Miss 
Murdstone. 

‘The boy will be idle there,* said Miss Murdstone, 
looking into a pickle jar, ‘ but to be sure he will be idle 
here— or anywhere, in my opinion.* And after a while 
she added, ‘It is of paramount importance that my 
brother should not be disturbed or made uncomfortable. 
I suppose I had better say yes.* 

David thanked her, without making any show of joy, 
lest it should induce her to withdraw her consent. And 
when the month was out, Peggotty and he went away 
in the carrier’s cart. 

Peggotty was naturally in low spirits at leaving 
what had been her home for so many years. She 
had been walking in the churchyard too, very early, 
and she sat in the cart with her handkerchief at her 
eyes. 


DAVID COPPERFIELD 


92 

So long as she remained like this, Barkis gave no 
sign of life whatever ; but when she began to look about 
her, he grinned at David several times. 

‘ It*s a beautiful day, Mr. Barkis,’ remarked David. 

* It ain’t bad,’ said Mr. Barkis. 

‘ Peggotty is quite comfortable now, Mr. Barkis.’ 

‘ Is she, though ? ’ said Mr. Barkis. 

After reflecting about it, Mr. Barkis eyed her and 
said, Mre you pretty comfortable?* 

Peggotty laughed and said yes. 

‘ But really and truly, you know. Are you ? ’ growled 
Mr. Barkis, sliding nearer to her on the seat, and nudg- 
ing her with his elbow. * Are you ? Really and truly 
pretty comfortable ? Are you ? Eh ? * and Mr. Barkis 
nudged her again. 

He was so polite as to stop at a public-house on 
their account, and entertain them with boiled mutton 
and beer, expressing his hope often that Peggotty was 
pretty comfortable. 

Mr. Peggotty and Ham were waiting for them at 
the old place, and shouldered the boxes and walked 
away, when Mr. Barkis solemnly beckoned David with 
his forefinger. 

‘I say,’ growled Mr. Barkis, ‘it was all right’ 

‘ Oh r said David. 

‘ It didn’t come to an end there. It was all right’ 

‘ Oh r said David again. 

‘You know who was willin’,’ said the carrier. ‘It 
was Barkis, and Barkis only.’ And he shook hands 


PEGGOTTY’S WEDDING 93 

with David. ‘ I *m a friend of your’n. You made it all 
right, first. It*s all right* 

David hadn’t a notion as to what he meant; and 
stood staring at him till Peggotty called him away. 
Then she asked him what Barkis had been saying to 
him, and David told her. 

‘Like his impudence,* said Peggotty, ‘but I don’t 
mind that. Davy dear, what should you think if I 
was to think of getting married ? * 

‘Why— I suppose you would like me as much then 
as you do now,* said David. 

Peggotty hugged him in the road. ‘Tell me what 
you should say, darling?* she asked as they went 
along. 

‘If you were thinking of being married— to Mr. 
Barkis, Peggotty?* 

‘Yes,* said Peggotty. 

‘ I should think it would be a very good thing. For 
then you know, Peggotty, you would always have the 
horse and cart to bring you over to see me, and could 
come for nothing, and be sure of coming,* 

‘The sense of the dear!* cried Peggotty. ‘What 
I’ve been thinking of this month back!* And she 
added that she was unfit, perhaps, to go as a servant 
to a stranger ; and talked of liking to have a home of 
her own, and being not far from her darling girl’s 
resting-place. 

‘ Barkis is a good plain creetur,* said Peggotty, ‘and 
if I tried to do my duty by him, I think it would be my 


DAVID COPPERFIELD 


94 

fault if I wasn’t— if I wasn’t pretty comfortable,* and 
Peggotty laughed heartily. 

David laughed too; and they talked of Mr. Barkis 
till the boat-house came in sight. 

Mrs. Gummidge was waiting at the door, and every- 
thing was just the same in the dear old boat-house, 
down to the seaweed in the blue mug in the bedroom. 
But there was no little Em’ly to be seen, and David 
asked Mr. Peggotty where she was. 

‘She’s at school. Sir,’ said Mr. Peggotty; ‘she’ll be 
home,’ looking at the Dutch clock, ‘in from twenty 
minutes to half an hour’s time. We all on us feel the 
loss of her, bless ye.’ 

Mrs. Gummidge moaned. 

‘ Cheer up, mawther,’ said Mr. Peggotty. 

‘ I feel it more than anybody else,’ said Mrs. Gum- 
midge. ‘ I’m a lone lorn creetur, and she used to be 
a’most the only thing that didn’t go contrairy with me.’ 

Mr. Peggotty shaded his mouth with his hand and 
whispered, ‘ The old ’un ! ’ 

And David came to the conclusion that her spirits 
must be as low as ever. 

By and by a little figure appeared in the distance. 
It was little Em’ly, and David went to meet her. She 
had grown taller, and looked so very pretty that 
David suddenly felt shy, and let her pass as if he 
didn’t recognise her. 

Little Em’ly only laughed and ran past him, and 
then David had to run after her to catch her up. 


PEGGOTTY’S WEDDING 


95 


‘ Oh, it ’s you, is it ? ’ said little Em’ly. 

‘ Why, you knew who it was, Em’ly ? * said David. 

‘ And didn’t you know who it was ? ’ said Em’ly. 

David was going to kiss her; but she said she 
wasn’t a baby now, and ran away into the house. 

‘A little puss it is,’ said Mr. Peggotty, patting her 
with his great hand. 

‘So sh’ is! So sh’ is!’ cried Ham. ‘Mas’r Davy 
bor’, so sh’ is.’ 

Little Em’ly was spoiled by them all; especially by 
Mr. Peggotty, whom she could have coaxed into 
anything by only going and laying her cheek against 
his rough whiskers. 

But she was very tenderhearted ; and when they all 
sat round the fire after tea ; and Mr. Peggotty spoke 
very softly to David of his loss, the tears stood in little 
Em’ly’s eyes. 

‘ Ah ! ’ said Mr. Peggotty, taking up her curls, 
‘ here ’s another orphan, you see. Sir. And here,’ said 
Mr. Peggotty, giving Ham a back-handed knock in 
the chest, ‘ is another of ’em, though he don’t look 
much like it.’ 

‘ If I had you for my g^Jardian, Mr. Peggotty,’ David 
answered, ‘ I don’t think I should feel much like 
it’ 

‘Well said, Mas’r Davy bor!’ cried Ham in an 
ecstasy. ‘Hoorah! Well said! Nor more you wouldn’t! 
Hor! hor!’ and Ham returned Mr. Peggotty’s back- 
hander, and little Em’ly got up and kissed her uncle. 


96 DAVID COPPERFIELD 

‘And how’s your friend, Sir?’ asked Mr. Peggotty 
of David. 

* Steerforth ? ’ said David. 

‘That’s the name!’ cried Mr. Peggotty, turning to 
Ham. ‘ I knowed it was something in our way.’ 

‘You said it was Rudderford,’ observed Ham, 
laughing. 

‘Well,’ retorted Mr. Peggotty, ‘and ye steer with a 
rudder, don’t ye ? It ain’t far off. How is he. Sir ? ’ 

David said he was very well when he last saw him, 
and launched out as usual in Steerforth’s praise. 

Mr. Peggotty and Ham agreed to all he said, and 
little Em’ly listened with the deepest attention, her 
breath held, and her blue eyes sparkling like jewels. 

The days passed pretty much as they had passed 
before, except that little Em’ly had more tasks to 
learn, and needlework to do, so that she could not 
walk so often with David on the beach. 

Mr. Barkis used to come to see them every evening. 
The first time, he brought a bundle of oranges tied up 
in a handkerchief for Peggotty; and the next day a 
double set of pigs’ trotters, and another time a leg of 
pickled pork; and sometimes he took Peggotty out 
for a walk on the beach. 

At last, just before David left them all, Mr. Barkis 
drove up one morning in a chaise, dressed up very 
smartly in a new blue coat, to take Peggotty out for a 
holiday. David and little Em’ly were to go with them, 
and when they were seated in the chaise, Mr. Peggotty 


PEGGOTTY’S WEDDING 97 

offered Mrs. Gummidge an old shoe to throw after 
them for luck. 

‘It had better be done by somebody else, Dan’l,* 
said Mrs. Gummidge. ‘I’m a lone lorn creetur 
myself, and everything that reminds me of creeturs 
that ain’t lone and lorn goes contrairy with me.’ 

‘Come, old gal, take and heave it,* said Mr. 
Peggotty. 

But Mrs. Gummidge wouldn’t ; and Peggotty 
declared that she should ; so Mrs. Gummidge threw 
the shoe after them for luck, and burst into tears 
immediately, declaring that ‘she knowed she was a 
burden,* and had better be carried to the workhouse at 
once. 

David thought it was a very sensible idea, and 
wondered why they didn’t do it. 

Away they drove for their holiday excursion; and 
the first thing they did was to stop at a church, where 
Mr. Barkis tied the horse to some rails, and went in 
with Peggotty, leaving the children outside. 

They were a good while in the church, but came 
out at last, and then they drove away into the 
country. 

‘What name was it as I wrote up in the cart?’ 
asked Mr. Barkis of David with a wink. 

‘ Clara Peggotty,’ said David. 

‘ What name would it be as I should write up now 
if there was a tilt here?* said Mr. Barkis. 

‘ Clara Peggotty, again,* suggested David. 

G 


DAVID COPPERFIELD 


98 

‘ Clara Peggotty Barkis,’ answered the carrier, and 
burst into a roar of laughter. 

So they were married, and had gone into the church 
for that purpose ; and Peggotty had resolved to have 
a quiet wedding, because she wore her mourning dress 
still for her * dearest girl.’ 

She gave David a very loving kiss to let him see 
that she loved him as much as ever; and the little 
party drove over to a little inn where they had a 
splendid dinner, and after that a very good tea. It 
was dark when they got into the chaise again, and 
they drove cosily back, looking up at the stars and 
talking about them. 

Well, they came to the old boat-house again in good 
time at night; and there Mr. and Mrs. Barkis bade 
them good-bye and drove away snugly to their own 
home. David felt then, for the first time, that he had 
lost Peggotty ; but Mr. Peggotty and Ham, knowing 
what was in his mind, were ready with some supper, 
and their hospitable faces, to drive it away. 

It was a night tide; and soon after they went to 
bed, Mr. Peggotty and Ham went out to fish. David 
felt very brave at being left in the solitary house to 
protect little Em’ly and Mrs. Gummidge, and only 
wished that a lion or a serpent would make an attack 
on them that he might destroy him, and cover himself 
with glory. But as nothing of the sort happened to be 
walking about on Yarmouth flats that night, David 
dreamed of dragons instead. 


PEGGOTTY’S WEDDING 99 

Peggotty came next morning, and after breakfast 
David took leave of Mr. Peggotty, Ham, and Mrs. 
Gummidge, and little Em’ly, and went back with 
Peggotty to her own home— and a beautiful little 
home it was. 

That night David slept in a little room in the roof 
which was to be always his, Peggotty said, and should 
be kept for him in exactly the same state. 

‘Young or old, Davy dear, as long as I am alive and 
have this house over my head,* said Peggotty, ‘you 
shall find it as if I expected you here every minute. I 
shall keep it every day as I used to keep your old little 
room, my darling ; and if you was to go to China, you 
might think of it as being kept just the same, all the 
time you were away.* She said it with her arms round 
his neck; and David needed no one to tell him how 
true and constant she would be. 

He tried to thank her, and tried not to cry ; but his 
heart was heavy, for in the morning he was going home 
—home to Blunderstone and the Murdstones again, 
and there would be no mother there, and no Peggotty 
ever again. 

Barkis drove them over in the carrier*s cart next 
morning, and they left him at the gate. And it was 
strange to him to see the cart go on, taking Peggotty 
away, and leaving him under the old elm trees looking 
at the house in which there was no face to look on his 
with love or liking, any more. 


CHAPTER XII 

HE GOES OUT INTO THE WORLD 

The Murdstones disliked him. They sullenly, sternly, 
steadily overlooked the boy. They were not actually 
cruel to him ; they just neglected him. No one talked 
of school, and David hung about with nothing to do. 
He would rather have been sent to the hardest school 
that ever was kept, than go in this friendless, listless 
way; but at this time Mr. Murdstone’s business— he 
had something to do with a wine-merchant’s house in 
London— was not prospering well, and he made that 
an excuse for not sending David to school ; indeed, he 
tried to believe that the boy had no claim on him at all. 

The Murdstones objected to his making friends in 
Blunderstone ; and what was worst of all, they seldom 
allowed him to visit Peggotty. Perhaps they were 
afraid that the boy might complain of their treatmeat ; 
but Peggotty, faithful to her promise, either came to 
see him, or met him somewhere near, once every week, 
and never came without some dainty of her own 
making. 

Week after week, month after month, he lived this 
solitary life ; when one day, loitering somewhere in his 
100 


HE GOES OUT INTO THE WORLD loi 

usual listless way, he came suddenly upon Mr. Murd- 
stone walking with a gentleman. 

The gentleman laughed and spoke to David, and 
David looking at him felt he had seen him before, and 
then remembered that he was Mr. Quinion, the gentle- 
man he had seen at the hotel at Lowestoft, when Mr. 
Murdstone took him before him on his horse, to spend 
that day with his friends. 

‘ And how do you get on, and where are you being 
educated ? * asked Mr. Quinion. 

David didn’t know what to reply, and glanced at Mr. 
Murdstone. 

‘ He is at home at present,* said Mr. Murdstone. 
‘He is not being educated anywhere. I don’t know 
what to do with him. He is a difficult subject/ ; and 
his eye darkened with a frown. 

‘ Humph 1 ’ said Mr. Quinion, looking at them both. 
‘Fine weather.’ And after a little while he added, ‘I 
suppose you are a pretty sharp fellow still ? ’ 

‘Ay. He’s sharp enough,’ said Mr. Murdstone. 
* You had better let him go.’ 

Mr. Quinion took his hand off David’s shoulder, and 
David hurried home : but, turning back, he saw them 
looking after him and talking, and he felt they were 
speaking of him. 

Mr. Quinion came to sleep at their house that 
night, and the next morning, after breakfast, as 
David was leaving the room, Mr. Murdstone called 
him back. 


102 


DAVID COPPERFIELD 


‘ David,’ said he, ‘ to the young, this is a world for 

action ; not for moping and droning in 

‘As you do,* added Miss Murdstone. 

Mr. Quinion looked out of the window. 

‘I suppose you know, David,* went on Mr. Murd- 
stone, ‘that I am not rich. You have received some 
considerable education already. What is before you, 
is a fight with the world ; and the sooner you begin it 
the better. You have heard the counting-house 
mentioned sometimes ? * 

‘ The counting-house, Sir ? * repeated David. 

‘Of Murdstone and Grinby, in the wine trade,* he 
replied. 

‘ I think I have heard the business mentioned. Sir,* 
said David vaguely. 

‘Mr. Quinion manages that business,* said Mr. 
Murdstone, and suggests that it gives employment to 
some other boys, and that he sees no reason why it 
shouldn’t, on the same terms, give employment to you.* 
‘ He having,* put in Mr. Quinion in a low voice, and 
half turning round, ‘ no other prospect, Murdstone.* 
Mr. Murdstone made an angry, impatient gesture 
and went on — ‘Those terms are, that you will earn 
enough yourself to provide for your eating and drink- 
ing, and pocket-money. Your lodging (which I have 
arranged for) will be paid by me. So will your wash- 
ing * 

‘Which will be kept down to my estimate,* said Miss 
Murdstone. 


HE GOES OUT INTO THE WORLD 103 

‘ So you are now going to London, David, with Mr. 
Quinion, to begin the world on your own account.’ 

‘ In short, you are provided for,’ said Miss Murdstone, 
* and will please to do your duty.* 

David hardly knew whether he was pleased or 
frightened. He was barely ten years old, and to have 
to begin the world on his own account at that early 
age was naturally rather appalling. 

But he hadn’t much time to think about it, for the 
very next morning his small trunk was packed, and he 
found himself sitting in the postchaise that was carry- 
ing Mr. Quinion to the London coach at Yarmouth— 
‘a lone lorn creetur,’ indeed, as Mrs. Gummidge might 
have said. 

Murdstone and Grinby’s warehouse was at the 
water-side, down by Blackfriars. It was a crazy old 
house with a wharf of its own, with old grey rats 
swarming in the cellars. David could hear them 
squeaking as they scuffled and grubbed about, when 
he went for the first time to the warehouse, with his 
trembling hand in Mr. Quinion’s. 

Here he was handed over to the care of a lad with a 
ragged apron and a paper cap, called Mick Walker, 
who was summoned to show David his work. 

It was to rinse and wash the bottles that were to be 
filled with wine, to hold them up against the light, and 
reject those that were cracked or flawed. There were 
corks to be fitted to them, or seals to be put up on the 
corks, and labels to be pasted on them when the 


104 


DAVID COPPERFIELD 


bottles were filled with wine, which had then to be 
packed in casks. 

Mick Walker told him that his father was a barge- 
man; and that the other boy who was to work with 
them was called Mealy Potatoes— a nickname that the 
warehousemen had given him on account of his mealy 
complexion. 

Mealy’s father was a waterman, and a fireman too, he 
said ; and Mealy’s little sister did imps in the Panto- 
mimes, of which they seemed very proud. 

David thought of Steerforth and Traddles, and the 
rest of the Salem House boys ; and whenever Mick 
went out of the room to fetch an3rthing, the tears rolled 
down David’s cheeks, and mingled with the water in 
which he was washing the bottles, and he sobbed as if 
his heart would break. 

At half-past twelve the boys got up to go to their 
dinner, and Mr. Quinion tapped at the counting-house 
window, and beckoned to him to go into his room 
where he sat behind a desk. 

David went in and saw there a stoutish, middle-aged 
man, in a brown surtout and black tights and shoes, 
with no more hair upon his head (which was a . large 
one and very shining) than there is upon an egg. His 
clothes were shabby, but he had an imposing shirt 
collar on ; and he carried a jaunty sort of stick, with a 
large pair of rusty tassels to it ; and a quizzing-glass 
hung outside his coat. 

*This is he,’ said Mr. Quinion, meaning David. 


HE GOES OUT INTO THE WORLD 105 

‘This/ said the stranger, with a condescending roll 
in his voice, ‘is Master Copperfield. I hope I see you 
well, Sir ? ’ 

David, who felt very ill at ease, said he was well, and 
hoped the gentleman was well also. 

‘I am,’ said the stranger, ‘thank Heaven, quite 
well ’ ; and he added that he had had a letter from Mr. 
Murdstone asking him to receive David into his house. 

‘This is Mr. Micawber,’ said Mr. Quinion. ‘ He has 
been written to by Mr. Murdstone on the subject of 
your lodgings, and he will receive you as a lodger.* 

‘My address,* said Mr. Micawber, ‘is Windsor 
Terrace, City Road. I— in short,* said Mr. Micawber 
with a genteel air—* I live there.* David bowed. 

‘Under the impression,* said Mr. Micawber, ‘that 
your peregrinations in this metropolis have not as yet 
been extensive, and that you might have some difficulty 
in penetrating the arcana of the modern Babylon in the 
direction of the City Road— in short,* said Mr. Micawber, 
in. a burst of confidence, ‘that you might lose yourself, 
I shall be happy to call this evening, and install you 
in the knowledge of the nearest way.* 

David thought it very friendly of him to take so much 
trouble, and thanked him with all his heart. 

‘At what hour,* said he, ‘shall I ’ 

‘ At about eight,* said Mr. Quinion. 

‘At about eight,* said Mr. Micawber. ‘ I beg to wish 
you good day.* Then he put on his hat, and went out 
with his cane under his arm ; very upright, and hum- 


io6 DAVID COPPERFIELD 

ming a tune when he was clear of the counting- 
house. 

Mr. Quinion then told David that he was to make 
himself as useful as he could in the warehouse, 
and that his salary would be six shillings a week; 
and he put down the first week’s salary there and 
then. 

Mealy Potatoes undertook to carry his trunk to Mr. 
Micawber’s, as it was too heavy for David to carry 
himself, and David gave him sixpence for his trouble 
out of his first week’s salary ; and then went out to a 
cook-shop near, and bought a meat-pie for another 
sixpence, and had a drink at a neighbouring pump. 

At eight o’clock in the evening Mr. Micawber 
appeared, and they walked away together, his new 
friend impressing the names of the streets, and the 
shapes of the corner houses upon him, as they went 
along, that he might find his way back easily in the 
morning. 

The house in Windsor Terrace was shabby like its 
master ; and like him, too, made all the show it could. 
He presented David to Mrs. Micawber, a thin, faded 
lady, who was sitting in the parlour, nursing a baby, 
which was one of twins. 

There were two other children beside the twins; 
Master Micawber aged four, and Miss Micawber aged 
three. There was also a dark-complexioned young 
woman, with a habit of snorting, who was servant to 
the family, and who told David, when he ’d been there 


HE GOES OUT INTO THE WORLD 107 

half an hour, that she was * a orfling,* and came from 
St. Luke’s workhouse. 

Mrs. Micawber took him to his room, which was at 
the top of the house, and carried the babies with her. 
The room was rather close, and very scantily furnished. 

*I never thought,* said Mrs. Micawber, ‘before I was 
married, when I lived with papa and mamma, that I 
should ever find it necessary to take a lodger. But 
Mr. Micawber being in difficulties, all considerations 
of private feeling must give way.* 

David said ‘ Yes, ma’am.’ 

‘Mr. Micawber’s difficulties are almost overwhelm- 
ing just at present,* said Mrs. Micawber ; ‘ and whether 
it is possible to bring him through them, I don’t know.’ 

Mrs. Micawber told him, too, that she had tried to 
exert herself ; and, indeed, the centre of the street door 
was perfectly covered with a great brass plate, on 
which was engraved, ‘ Mrs. Micawber’s Boarding 
Establishment for Young Ladies ’ ; but no young ladies 
had ever come to school there. 

Indeed, the only visitors David ever saw there were 
creditors, who used to come at all hours ; some of them 
were quite ferocious. 

One dirty-faced man used to edge himself into the 
passage as early as seven o’clock in the morning, and 
call up the stairs to Mr. Micawber, ‘ Come 1 You ain’t 
out yet, you know. Pay us, will you ? Don’t hide, you 
know ; that ’s mean. I wouldn’t be mean if I was you. 
Pay us, will you ? You just pay us, d 'ye hear ? Come I * 


105 DAVID COPPERFIELD 

And sometimes he would go across the street and roar 
up ‘ robbers * and * swindlers * at the windows where he 
knew Mr. Micawber was. 

It mortified Mr. Micawber exceedingly. Sometimes 
he pretended he was going to cut his throat with his 
razor ; but he would think better of it by and by, and 
after polishing up his shoes with extraordinary pains, 
would go out, humming a tune. 

Mrs. Micawber, too, would have a fainting fit at 
such times; but she would cheer up an hour later, 
send two teaspoons to the pawnbroker’s, and with it 
pay for a meal of lamb chops, breaded, and a glass of 
warm ale. 

Once, after the visit of a ferocious creditor, she fell 
under the grate in a swoon with a baby in her arms ; 
but that same night she was able to eat a veal cutlet 
by the kitchen fire, and entertained David with stories 
of her papa and mamma, and the company they used 
to keep. 

David passed all his leisure time with the Micawbers, 
and grew to like them very well. They provided him 
with only a bedroom. He bought all his food himself; 
and used to keep his bread and cheese in a little 
cupboard there to make his supper on when he came 
home at night. 

All day long he washed the wine bottles with Mealy 
Potatoes and Mick Walker; but the secret agony of 
his soul was great when he remembered Traddles and 
Steerforth, and thought of them growing up into 


HE GOES OUT INTO THE WORLD 109 

refined and educated men, while his everyday com- 
panions were coarse and ignorant lads, and he himself 
had no hope of becoming anything better. 

He felt degraded by his menial work, and felt, too, 
that he had done nothing to merit such degradation ; 
and though he wrote to Peggotty often, he couldn’t 
bring himself to let her know how miserably unhappy 
he was, partly for love of her, for it would have made 
her miserable, and partly because he was too much 
ashamed. 

He never made a single acquaintance besides the 
Micawbers ; nor spoke to any of the many boys whom 
he saw daily in going to and from the warehouse, and 
in prowling about the streets at meal-times. He grew 
more secret, and more self-reliant, and shabbier every 
day. 

He never told the boys he worked with how he came 
to be there doing such menial work, nor let them know 
how much he hated it. He did his work and kept his 
counsel ; but to think of Peggotty and his mother, and 
the dear old days, was to wellnigh break his heart. 

The boys and men at the warehouse felt he was 
different from themselves. ‘The young gent* they 
grew to call him, and sometimes ‘the young Suffolker.* 
Mealy Potatoes objected to this one day; but Mick 
Walker immediately put him down. 

The foreman of the packers at the warehouse, a man 
named Gregory, and the carman, named Tipp, used to 
call him ‘David* sometimes; but that was generally 


no 


DAVID COPPERFIELD 


after he had entertained them with bits out of 
Roderick Random and the rest of the dear old books. 

He was so young and childish that sometimes he 
could not resist the stale pastry put out for sale at 
half price at the pastrycook doors, and spent his 
money in buying tartlets, and had to go without meat 
for his dinner. 

Once he took his own bread with him wrapped in a 
piece of paper— he had brought it from home in the 
morning — and went into a fine, fashionable shop near 
Drury Lane, and ordered a small plate of beef to eat 
with his bread. 

The waiter stared hard at the little fellow, but he 
brought him the beef, and then he called another 
waiter to come and look at him. 

Oh ! if his mother could have seen him now I Or 
Peggottyl Working from morning till night with 
common men and boys, a shabby child I Lounging 
about the streets at meal-times, insufficiently fed I 

Nobody ever gave the boy advice; there was nobody 
to help or to encourage him. But for the mercy of God 
he might easily have become a little robber, or a little 
vagabond. 


CHAPTER XIII 

THE DIFFICULTIES OF THE MICAWBERS 

Mrs. Micawber might have looked after him better, for 
she had really a kind heart ; but she was so weighed 
down with her own cares and her difficulties to make 
both ends meet, and her anxieties about Mr. Micaw- 
ber’s creditors, who became more ferocious every day, 
that she had no time to think of David as a little 
friendless child, who might be in need of a little 
motherly counsel now and then. 

On the contrary, his going to and from the ware- 
house every day, on his own account, earning his living 
as if he were a man, made her look upon him as a youth 
of some experience, rather than a very small boy of 
ten ; and she got into the habit of confiding to him her 
troubles, instead of trying to lighten his own. 

David had a sympathetic nature, and was often more 
troubled about the Micawbers’ troubles than the 
Micawbers were themselves ; and used to walk about 
in his forlorn fashion, thinking of Mrs. Micawber’s 
ways and means, and heavy with the weight of Mr. 
Micawber’s debts. 

Often on a Saturday night Mr. Micawber would 

ui 


II2 


DAVID COPPERFIELD 


come home in floods of tears, declaring there was 
nothing before him but a jail ; but after supper he 
would cheer up, and begin to calculate how much it 
would cost to put bow windows to the house * in case 
anything turned up,* which was his favourite expres- 
sion. And Mrs. Micawber was just the same. In 
their kindness of heart they often invited the child to 
share their supper, but David always made some 
excuse, and would not accept the invitation— though 
he would have enjoyed it very much— because he knew 
they often had not too much for themselves. 

And then his birthday came round again. His last 
birthday he had spent at Salem House — a memorable 
birthday, the day that Mrs. Creakle sent for him to tell 
him that his mother was dead. How much had 
happened to him since then I H e hardly felt that he was 
the same David Copperfield—* Young Copperfield ’as 
Steerforth used to call him— spinning yarns in the 
bedroom at night, with Tommy Traddles laughing in 
the dark, and Steerforth refreshing him with sips of 
wine when he became a little ‘ roopy.* 

David didn’t tell anybody that it was his birthday, of 
course ; he was too reserved for that ; but he went to 
the bar of a public-house and asked the landlord— for 
it was a special occasion— ‘What is your best— your 
very best — ale, a glass ? * 

‘Twopence halfpenny is the price of the Genuine 
Stunning Ale,* said the landlord, staring at him. 

‘Then,’ said David, producing the money, ‘just draw 


DIFFICULTIES OF MICAWBERS 113 

me a glass of the Genuine Stunning, if you please, 
with a good head to it/ 

The landlord looked at him over the bar, from head 
to foot, with a strange smile on his face ; and instead 
of drawing the beer, looked round the screen and said 
something to his wife. 

She came out from behind it with her work in her 
hand, and stood beside her husband, looking at the 
strange small boy, with his old-fashioned face and 
manner. 

They asked him what his name was, and how old 
he was, and where he lived, and how he was employed, 
and how he came there. David invented appropriate 
answers in his little mannish way. And then the 
landlord gave him the beer; but the landlord’s wife, 
opening the little half-door of the bar, bent down and 
put his money back into his hand, and gave him a kiss 
that was half admiring and half compassionate, but all 
womanly and good. 

The weeks and months went by. He wondered 
whether he would ever be rescued from this miserable 
existence; and thought hopelessly of growing up to 
be nothing more than a carman like Tipp, or a foreman 
packer like Gregory. He was forgetting what he had 
learned, too ; and it made him unhappy, for in the old 
days David had been an ambitious boy, and was 
reckoned to be sharp and clever. 

‘Master Copperfield,’ said Mrs. Micawber one day, 
meeting him with very red eyes, ‘ I make no stranger 


H 


DAVID COPPERFIELD 


1 14 

of you, and therefore do not hesitate to say that Mr. 
Micawber’s difficulties are coming to a crisis.* 

It made David miserable to hear it — he had become 
quite fond of the Micawbers— he looked at her tear- 
stained face with the utmost sympathy. 

* With the exception of the heel of a Dutch cheese— 
which is not adapted to the wants of a young family,* 
said Mrs. Micawber, there is really not a scrap of 
anything in the larder. I was accustomed to speak of 
the larder when I lived with papa and mamma, and I 
use the word almost unconsciously. What I mean to 
express, is, that there is nothing to eat in the house.* 
David was greatly concerned. He had two or three 
shillings in his pocket, as it was the middle of the 
week, and he pulled them out directly, and begged 
Mrs. Micawber to take them as a loan, with tears in 
his own eyes. 

But Mrs. Micawber, making him put them back in 
his pocket, kissed him, and shook her head. 

‘ No, my dear Master Copperfield, far be it from my 
thoughts. But you have a discretion beyond your 
years, and can render me another kind of service 
if you will ; and a service I will thankfully accept.* 
David begged her to tell him what it was. 

‘I have parted with the plate myself,* said Mrs. 
Micawber. * Six tea, two salt, and a pair of sugars, I 
have at different times borrowed money on, in secret, 
with my own hands. But the twins are a great tie ; 
and to me, with my recollections of papa and mamma. 


DIFFICULTIES OF MICAWBERS 115 

these transactions are very painful. There are still a 
few trifles that we could part with. Mr. Micawber’s 
feelings would never allow him to dispose of them ; 
and Clickett — this was the servant from the work- 
house— ‘being of a vulgar mind, would take painful 
liberties if so much confidence were reposed in her. 
Master Copperfield, if I might ask you * 

David guessed that she wanted him to sell some of 
the trifles she spoke of, and begged her to let him be 
of use. And the next morning, before he went to the 
warehouse, he took a few books to a bookstall in the City 
Road, and sold them for whatever they would bring. 

After that he took something to sell or to pawn at 
the pawnbroker’s every morning, before he went to his 
work. 

The bookstall keeper used to get tipsy every night, 
and David would be ushered up to his bedroom, where 
he lay in a turn-up bed, with a cut in his forehead or a 
black eye, to bargain about the books ; while his wife 
stood by, with her shoes down at heel, rating him 
soundly all the time. 

Sometimes he couldn’t find his money, and would ask 
David to call again ; but his wife generally had some 
in her pocket, and would give David the money secretly 
as they went downstairs together. 

He began to be well known at the pawnbroker’s too ; 
and the man behind the counter noticed him a good 
deal, and often got him to decline a Latin noun, or to 
conjugate a Latin verb for him while he transacted the 


Ii6 DAVID COPPERFIELD 

business. Part of the money he brought home was 
always spent by Mrs. Micawber on something extra 
nice for supper. 

At last Mr. Micawber’s difficulties came to a crisis, 
and he was arrested early one morning, and taken to 
the King’s Bench Prison. He told David, as they took 
him away, that the God of day had now gone down on 
him ; and David, remembering when Roderick Random 
was in a debtors’ prison, that there was a man there 
with nothing on him but an old rug, thought Mr. 
Micawber’s heart was broken as well as his own. 

He spent a dismal day at the warehouse ; but Mr. 
Micawber cheered up in the prison, and played a 
lively game at skittles in the afternoon. 

On the Sunday after, David was to go and have 
dinner with him (for the debtors’ friends were allowed 
to visit them). Mr. Micawber met him at the gate, and 
took him up to his little room, and solemnly conjured 
him to take warning by his fate ; and said that ‘ if a 
man had twenty pounds a year for his income, and 
spent nineteen pounds nineteen shillings and sixpence, 
he would be happy, but that if he spent twenty pounds 
one, he would be miserable.’ 

Then he asked David to lend him a shilling, which he 
spent on a jug of porter, gave David a written order on 
Mrs. Micawber for the amount, wiped his eyes, and 
put away his handkerchief. 

They sat and talked before a little fire in a little 
rusty grate, till another debtor, who shared Mr. 



David dined with Mr. Micawber in prison 





f 




DIFFICULTIES OF MICAWBERS 117 

Micawber’s room, came in from the bakehouse with 
a loin of mutton on which the three made their dinner ; 
and early in the afternoon, David returned home to let 
Mrs. Micawber know how he had left her husband. 

She fainted, in her agitation, when she saw David 
come in ; and as soon as she had recovered, she made 
a little jug of egg-hot to comfort them while they talked 
over Mr. Micawber’s affairs. 

Bit by bit the furniture was all sold ; until at last 
Mrs. Micawber resolved to move, with her children, 
into the prison, where Mr. Micawber had now secured 
a room to himself; and David carried the key of the 
house to the landlord, who was very glad to get it. 

David had become so used to the Micawbers that he 
didn’t like to be parted from them; so a little room 
was hired for him outside the prison walls, and he 
used to take his breakfast with them every morning, 
and every evening he went to the prison, and walked 
up and down the parade with Mr. Micawber. 

The Micawbers lived more comfortably in the prison 
than they had lived out of it, for some relatives came 
to their assistance at this time, and helped them a 
good deal : and David, too, was now relieved of much 
of the weight of the family cares. 

Mr. Murdstone never inquired how David spent his 
time, and the boy never told any one at the warehouse. 
He still led the same secretly unhappy life, and his 
clothes were growing shabbier and shabbier. 

Mr. Murdstone never wrote to him. Miss Murd- 


ii8 DAVID COPPERFIELD 

stone had on one or two occasions sent, through Mr. 
Quinion, a parcel of mended clothes, with a scrap of 
paper enclosed in her handwriting to the effect that 
‘ J. M. trusted D. C. was applying himself to business, 
and devoting himself wholly to his duties.* Nothing 
else 1 Not a word of anything else! The child might 
have become a little castaway for all they cared. 


CHAPTER XIV 


DAVID MAKES A RESOLVE 

And so the weeks and months went by in the same 
dismal routine, until, through the help and advice of 
Mrs. Micawber’s relations, Mr. Micawber got his 
discharge from the prison ; and there was a prospect 
of something turning up for Mr. Micawber at last; 
but not in London— away from London, and as David 
walked home to his lodgings that evening, a weight lay 
upon his heart at the thought of parting from his only 
friends. 

He could not sleep that night. He had grown to be 
so accustomed to the Micawbers, and been so intimate 
with them in their distress, and was so utterly friend- 
less without them, that the prospect of going once 
more among unknown people was misery to him. 

He thought over all the shame and degradation of 
the past year, and cried to himself that his life was 
unendurable. Was there no hope of escape from it? 
None. None at all— unless he himself ran away 
from it ! 

To run away ! The thought came to him as he lay 
sleepless in bed, wondering what he would do after 

119 


120 


DAVID COPPERFIELD 


the Micawbers had gone; and it gradually shaped 
itself into a settled resolution. 

The Micawbers were going to Plymouth in a week’s 
time, and during that time they took lodgings in the 
same house with David, and Mr. Micawber went him- 
self to the counting-house to tell Mr. Quinion that 
he would have to relinquish his care of David on the 
day of his departure. 

Mr. Quinion called in Tipp, the carman, who was a 
married man, and had a room to let, and asked him if 
he could put David up. Tipp was only too glad, and 
David let them settle it so, and said nothing. He had 
made up his mind to run away as soon as the 
Micawbers had gone. 

He never breathed a word about it to a soul, of 
course; and his reticence made him think the more. 
Where was he to go? A hundred times he asked 
himself that questidn, tossing sleeplessly on his bed ; 
and a hundred times he went over that old story of his 
mother’s about the day when he was born (a story she 
had loved to tell him, and which he had loved to hear) 
the story of Miss Betsey Trotwood — his father’s aunt 
—marching into the house that windy March day, and 
bouncing out of it again, on hearing that the baby 
was a boy. 

‘Take off your cap, child, and let me see you — * 
he had heard the story so often— and how when his 
mother obeyed immediately, but with such nervous 
hands, her beautiful hair had fallen all about her face ; 


DAVID MAKES A RESOLVE I2i 

and how Miss Betsey had cried, ‘ Why bless my heart I 
You *re a very baby T in a very admiring voice. 

He could not forget how his mother had thought 
that she felt Miss Betsey touch her hair with no 
ungentle hand, and though it might have been his 
mother’s fancy, David made a little picture out of the 
idea — the terrible aunt relenting towards the girlish 
beauty that he recollected so well, and forgiving her 
entirely for being a * wax doll.’ 

If Miss Betsey knew of bis sorrows, might she not 
forgive him for having been born a boy ? 

He did not even know where Miss Betsey lived ; so 
he wrote a long letter to Peggotty, and asked her 
incidentally, if she remembered where it was; and 
asked her, too, if she could lend him half a guinea, 
which he wanted very particularly. 

Peggotty’s answer came immediately, with the half-* 
guinea enclosed, a world of love, and with the informa- 
tion that Miss Betsey lived at Dover, but whether at 
Dover itself, at Hythe, Sandgate, or Folkestone, she 
could not say. 

Then he asked one of the men at the warehouse if 
he could tell him where these last three places were, 
and the man telling him that they were all close 
together, David resolved to set out for Dover at the 
end of that very week. 

He passed his evenings with Mr. and Mrs. Micawber, 
and they became fonder of one another as the time of 
their parting drew near. On the last Sunday they 


122 


DAVID COPPERFIELD 


invited him to dinner; and they had a loin of pork, 
apple-sauce, and a pudding : and he gave his parting 
gifts to the children— a spotted horse which he had 
bought for little Wilkins Micawber, and a doll for 
little Emma. 

They had a very pleasant day ; but were sad about 
the coming separation. 

‘I shall never, Master Copperfield,* said Mrs. 
Micawber, ‘ revert to the period when Mr. Micawber 
was in difficulties, without thinking of you. Your 
conduct has been of the most delicate and obliging 
disposition. You have never been a lodger. You 
have been a friend.* 

‘My dear,* answered Mr. Micawber, ‘Copperfield 
has a heart to feel for the distresses of his fellow- 
creatures when they are behind a cloud, and a head to 
plan, and a hand— in short, a general ability to dis- 
pose of such available property as could be made 
away with.* 

He also begged David always to remember this 
piece of advice : ‘ Annual income twenty pounds, annual 
expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. 
Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure 
twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.* 

David, very much affected, promised to keep these 
precepts in his mind ; and the next morning he met the 
whole family at the coach office, and saw them, with a 
desolate heart, take their places outside, at the back. 

‘Master Copperfield,* said Mrs. Micawber, ‘God 


DAVID MAKES A RESOLVE 123 

bless you ! I never can forget all that you know, and 
I never would if I could. 

‘ Copperfield,' said Mr. Micawber, ‘farewell I Every 
happiness and prosperity 1 In case of anything turn- 
ing up (of which I am rather confident), I shall be 
extremely happy if it should be in my power to 
improve your prospects.’ 

Mrs. Micawber, sitting at the back of the coach with 
the children, and seeing David in the road looking 
wistfully up, suddenly seemed to wake up to the fact 
that he was only a very little boy, for she beckoned to 
him to climb up, and with a new and motherly expres- 
sion in her face, she put her arm round his neck, and 
gave him just such a kiss as she might have given to 
her own boy. 

David had barely time to get down again before the 
coach started, and he could hardly see the family for 
the handkerchiefs they waved. 

It was gone in a minute ; and David walked away to 
begin his weary day at Murdstone and Grinby’s. 

Being a very honest little fellow, and unwilling to 
disgrace the memory he was going to leave behind, he 
considered himself bound to remain until Saturday 
night; and as he had been paid a week’s wages in 
advance when he first came there, he was not going to 
present himself in the counting-house to receive his 
salary. For this express reason he had borrowed the 
half-guinea, that he might have some money for his 
travelling expenses. 


124 


DAVID COPPERFIELD 


So when Saturday night came round, and they were 
ail waiting in the warehouse to be paid, and Tipp, 
the carman, had gone in first to draw his money, 
David shook Mick Walker by the hand, and asked 
him to tell Mr. Quinion that he had gone to move his 
box to Tipp’s ; then he said a last good-bye to Mealy 
Potatoes, and then he ran away. 

As he ran off to his lodging, he looked about for 
some one to help him to carry his box to the booking- 
office for the Dover coach, and looked hard at a long- 
legged young man with an empty donkey cart in the 
Blackfriars Road. 

‘Well, sixpenn’orth of bad ha’pence,* said the young 
man, ‘you ’ll know me agin to swear to.* 

David said he only looked at him because he thought 
he might like a job. 

‘Wot job?’ said the long-legged young man. 

‘To move a box,* said David. 

‘Wot box?’ 

David told him, and that it was in the next street, 
and that he’d give him sixpence to take it to the 
Dover coach-office. 

‘Done with you for a tanner,’ said the long-legged 
young man, and directly got upon his cart and rattled 
away at such a rate, that it was as much as David 
could do to keep pace with the donkey. 

They went up to his little room and brought down 
the box together, and David asked him to stop for a 
minute when he came to the dead wall of the King’s 


DAVID MAKES A RESOLVE 125 

Bench Prison, where he wanted to put on a direction 
card ; because he didn’t want to put it on in the house, 
lest any of the landlord’s family should see the direc- 
tion, and guess what he was going to do. 

The young man rattled on again, and David had 
much difficulty in catching him up at the appointed 
place. 

Being much flushed and excited, he tumbled his 
half-guinea out of his pocket in pulling out the card ; 
and he put it into his mouth for safety, and with 
trembling hands had just tied the label to his box, 
when he felt himself violently chucked under the chin 
by the long-legged young man, and saw his half-guinea 
fly out of his mouth into the man’s hand. 

‘Wot!’ cried he, seizing David by the jacket collar, 
with a frightful grin, ‘this is a pollis case, is it? 
You’re going to bolt, are you? Come to the pollis, 
you young warmin, come to the pollis ! ’ 

‘You give me my money back, if you please,* said 
David, very much frightened ; ‘ and leave me alone.’ 

‘Come to the pollis!’ repeated the young man, ‘you 
shall prove it yourn to the pollis.’ 

‘Give me my box and my money, will you?* cried 
David, bursting into tears. 

The young man still replied, ‘Come to the pollis,* 
with his hand on David’s collar, when he changed his 
mind, jumped into the cart, sat upon the box, and 
exclaiming that he would drive to the pollis straight, 
rattled away harder than ever. 


126 


DAVID COPPERFIELD 


David ran after him as fast as he could, but he had 
no breath to call out. He was nearly run over twenty 
times at least in half a mile. Now he lost him, now 
he saw him, now he lost him again, now he fell down 
in the mud, now he ran into somebody’s arms, now 
he went headlong at a post. 

At length, confused by fright and heat, he couldn’t 
run any more; and, panting and crying, but never 
stQpping, he faced about for Greenwich, which he 
understood was on the Dover Road, with the wild 
idea of running, running on until he found his aunt. 


CHAPTER XV 


HIS EVENTFUL JOURNEY 

But his scattered senses came back to him when he 
had gone as far as the Kent Road ; and sitting down 
on the door-step of one of the terrace houses there, 
quite spent and exhausted, he wondered what he 
should do. 

It was dark by this time, and the clocks were 
striking ten as he sat resting on the step ; but it was 
a summer night fortunately, and fine weather. 

In all his distress he had no notion of going back— 
he never dreamed of going back. As soon as he had 
recovered his breath he got up and went on. 

He had just three-halfpence in his pocket, left out 
of his last week’s wages ; but he trudged on miserably, 
until he happened to pass a little shop where it was 
written up that ladies’ and gentlemen’s cast-off clothes 
were bought. David’s little experience with Mr. and 
Mrs. Micawber suggested to him that here might 
be a means of adding to his scanty store ; so he 
went up the next side street, took off his waistcoat, 
rolled it neatly under his arm, and came back to the 


128 


DAVID COPPERFIELD 


shop door, where the master was sitting in his shirt- 
sleeves, smoking. 

‘ If you please,’ said he, ‘ I’m to sell this for a fair price.* 

Mr. Dolloby— Dolloby was the name over the shop 
door— took the waistcoat, stood his pipe on its head 
against the door-post, went into the shop, followed 
by David, snuffed two candles with his fingers, spread 
the waistcoat on the counter, and looked at it there, 
held it up against the light, and looked at it there, 
and said : 

‘What do you call a price, now, for this here little 
weskit ? ’ 

‘ Oh I You know best. Sir,’ returned David modestly. 

‘I can’t be buyer and seller too,’ said Mr. Dolloby. 
‘ Put a price on this here little weskit.’ 

‘Would eighteen pence be * David hinted after 

some hesitation. 

Mr. Dolloby rolled it up again, and gave it back to 
him. ‘ I should rob my family,’ he said, ‘ if I was to 
offer ninepence for it.* 

David was disappointed, but there was no help for 
it. He said he would take ninepence for the waist- 
coat. And Mr. Dolloby, not without some grumbling, 
produced ninepence. David wished him good night, 
and walked out of the shop with the money in his 
hand, and buttoned up his coat over his shirt. 

On and on he trudged until he came to Blackheath 
— Blackheath, where his old school, Salem House, 
was,— and he thought he should like to sleep that 


HIS EVENTFUL JOURNEY 129 

night behind the wall at the back of the school, in 
a corner where there used to be a haystack. He 
imagined it would be a kind of company to have the 
boys, and the bedroom where he used to tell the 
stories, so near him. 

He had had a hard day’s work, and was pretty well 
jaded when he found out Salem House. He walked 
round the old wall cautiously first, and looked up at 
the windows to see if all the lights were out. And 
then he found the corner with the haystack there, 
and lay down by it, for the first time in his life, 
without a roof above his head. 

He slept soundly, for he was tired out, and dreamed 
of lying on his old school bed, talking to the boys in 
the room; and woke up with a start, crying out, 
‘Steerforthl Steerforthl’ and found himself sitting 
upright, looking wildly at the stars glistening and 
glimmering above him. 

He felt afraid of he knew not what, the night was 
so lonely and silent, and he got up and walked about ; 
but he was very weary, and soon lay down again, 
and slept till the ringing of the getting-up bell at 
Salem House awoke him. 

He would have liked to have lurked about in the 
hope of seeing Steerforth come out, or even Traddles ; 
but it was too risky, and he crept away as Mr. 
Creakle’s boys were getting up, and struck into the 
long dusty track which he had first known to be the 
Dover Road when he was one of them. 


I 


DAVID COPPERFIELD 


130 

It was Sunday morning, and he heard the church 
bells ringing as he plodded on, and met the people 
who were going to church. He bought some bread, 
and still went on, and got that day through three- 
and-twenty miles, passing many tramps on the 
road. 

One or two little houses with the notice, ‘ Lodgings 
for Travellers,’ hanging out, tempted him; but he 
was afraid of spending the few pence he had, and 
toiled on into Chatham, and crept at last upon a sort 
of grass-grown battery overhanging a lane, where 
a sentry was walking to and fro. Here he lay down 
near a cannon, happy in the society of the sentry’s 
footsteps, and slept soundly till morning. 

But he was stiff and sore of foot, and quite dazed 
by the beating of drums and marching of troops, and 
felt that he could not be able to go very far on his 
journey that day. 

He had only a few pence left, and he thought the 
best thing he could do, before he left Chatham, was 
to sell his jacket. So he took it off and carried it 
under his arm— thankful that it was warm summer- 
time — and began to look about for a likely shop. 

There were lots of second-hand-clothes shops every- 
where; but he wanted to find some little place like 
Mr. Dolloby’s; and at last took courage to enter a 
small low shop at the corner of a dirty lane. He had 
to go down two or three steps to go inside, and 
stepped down with a beating heart. 


HIS EVENTFUL JOURNEY 131 

‘Oh, what do you want?* cried an ugly old man, 
seizing David by the hair. 

He was a dreadful old man to look at, in a filthy 
flannel waistcoat, and smelling terribly of rum. ‘ Oh, 
my eyes and limbs, what do you want? Oh, my 
lungs and liver, what do you want? Oh, goroo, 
goroo 1 * 

The last word was like a rattle in his throat. 

‘I wanted to know,’ said David trembling, ‘if you 
would buy a jacket ? ’ 

* Oh, let’s see the jacket I’ cried the old man. ‘Oh, 
my heart on fire, show the jacket to us 1 Oh, my eyes 
and limbs, bring the jacket out !’ 

With that he took his trembling hands, which were 
like the claws of a great bird, out of David’s hair, 
and put on a pair of spectacles. 

‘Oh, how much for the jacket?’ cried the old man, 
after examining it. ‘Oh, goroo! — how much for the 
jacket?’ 

‘ Half-a-crown,’ answered David, plucking up his 
courage. 

‘ Oh, my lungs and liver I ’ cried the old man. ‘ Oh, 
my eyes, no! Oh, my limbs, no! Eighteenpence. 
Goroo ! ’ 

He spoke in a sort of sing-song way ending in a 
high-pitched key, and every time he said ‘Goroo’ 
his eyes seemed to be in danger of starting out 

‘I’ll take eighteenpence, faltered David, glad to 
have closed the bargain. 


132 


DAVID COPPERFIELD 


‘Oh, my liver!’ cried the old man, throwing the 
jacket on a shelf. ‘Get out of the shop! Oh, my 
lungs, get out of the shop ! Oh, my eyes and limbs— 
goroo— don’t ask for money ; make it an exchange.’ 

David was very much frightened; but he told him 
humbly that he wanted money, and that nothing else 
was of any use to him, but that he would wait for it, 
as he desired, outside, and had no wish to hurry him. 
So he went outside, and sat down in the shade in 
the corner. 

By and by the boys in the streets came skirmishing 
about the shop, shouting out that the old man had 
sold himself to the devil, and bawled, ‘You ain’t 
poor, you know, Charley, as you pretend. Bring out 
your gold. Come ! It ’s in the lining of the mattress, 
Charley. Rip it open and let ’s have some.* 

Then they would offer him a knife for the purpose, 
and it exasperated him so much that he ’d rush out of 
the shop after them, and send them flying. 

All day long the boys teased him at intervals, and all 
day long he made frantic rushes after them. 

He made many attempts to induce David to consent 
to an exchange, and came out with a fishing-rod one 
time, which David refused, beseeching him with tears 
to give him the money or the jacket; then he came out 
with a fiddle, and then with a cocked-hat, and then 
with a flute ; but David refused them all, and sat on in 
desperation. 

At last, to get rid of him, the old man began to pay 



He'd rush out of the shop after them and send them flying- 



k^. 


HIS EVENTFUL JOURNEY 133 

him in halfpence, and was full two hours getting by 
easy stages to a shilling. 

‘Oh, my eyes and limbs!’ he then cried, peeping 
hideously out of the shop, after a long pause, ‘ will you 
go for twopence more ? * 

‘ I can’t,’ said David, ‘ I shall be starved.’ 

‘Oh, my lungs and liver, will you go for three- 
pence ? ’ 

‘ I would go for nothing if I could,’ said David, ‘ but I 
want the money badly.’ 

‘ Oh, go— roo I Will you go for fourpence ? ’ 

David was so faint and weary, for he had sat there 
all day, that he closed with this offer ; and taking the 
money out of his claw, not without trembling, went 
away more hungry and thirsty than he had ever been 
before, and spent threepence on his tea ; and feeling in 
better spirits after that, he limped seven miles upon his 
road, till he came to a little stream where he washed 
his aching feet, and then lay down under a haystack 
for the night. 

His road the next morning lay through a succession 
of hop-grounds and orchards. Ripe apples hung on the 
trees, and the hop-pickers were busy at work. David 
thought it beautiful, and made up his mind to sleep 
among the hops that night. But the tramps he met 
on the road frightened him, for some of them looked at 
him quite ferociously. 

One ruffian - looking fellow— a tinker— who had a 
woman with him, faced about and stared after the boy, 


134 


DAVID COPPERFIELD 


and then roared out in such a tremendous voice to come 
back, that David halted and looked round. 

‘ Come here, when you Ye called,* said the tinker, ‘ or 
I *11 rip your young body open.* 

David felt it was best to go back, and as he went he 
noticed that the woman had a black eye. 

* Where are you going ? ’ said the tinker, gripping the 
bosom of his shirt with his blackened hand. 

‘ I ’m going to Dover.* 

‘ Where do you come from ? * asked the tinker, giving 
his hand another turn in his shirt, to hold him more 
securely. 

‘ I come from London,* said David. 

‘ What lay are you on ? Are you a prig ? * 

‘ N — no,’ said David. 

‘ If you make a brag of your honesty to me,* said the 
tinker, ‘ 1 *11 knock your brains out. Have you got the 
price of a pint of beer about you ? If you have, out with 
it, afore I take it away I * 

David would have produced it at once, but that the 
woman slightly shook her head at him and formed, ‘ No,* 
with her lips. 

*I am very poor,* said David, ‘and have got no 
money.* 

‘ Why, what do you mean ? * said the tinker, looking 
so sternly at him, that David almost feared he saw the 
money in his pocket. 

‘ Sir,* stammered the boy. 

‘What do you mean,’ said the tinker, ‘by wearing my 


HIS EVENTFUL JOURNEY 135 

brother’s silk handkercher ? Give it over here ! ’ And 
he had it off David’s neck in a moment, and tossed it to 
the woman. 

The woman burst into a fit of laughter, as if she 
thought this a joke, and tossed it back to David, nodded 
once, as slightly as before, and made the word ‘Go’ 
with her lips. 

But the tinker dragged the handkerchief out of the 
boy’s hand, and putting it loosely round his own neck, 
turned upon the woman with an oath, and knocked 
her down. 

This adventure frightened David so much that after- 
wards when he saw any of these people coming, he 
turned back till he found a hiding-place, where he 
remained till they had gone out of sight. 

On, on he tramped, but, under all the difficulties 
of his journey, he was comforted and led on by the 
fanciful picture he had made of his stern aunt soften- 
ing under the beauty of his fair young mother, and 
putting her hand tenderly on her pretty hair. 

The picture was with him when he lay down to sleep 
among the hops ; it was with him when he woke up in 
the morning ; and it went before him all day. 


CHAPTER XVI 


HOW MISS BETSEY RECEIVED HIM 

At last, on the sixth day after his flight, he set foot in the 
town of Dover ; and then when he stood with his ragged 
shoes, and his dusty, sunburnt, half-clothed figure, the 
fanciful picture seemed to vanish like a dream, and he 
felt afraid and dispirited. 

He asked some boatmen whom he met if they could 
tell him where Miss Trot wood lived. One said she 
lived in the South Foreland Light, and had singed 
her whiskers by doing so ; another that she was made 
fast to the great buoy outside the harbour, and could 
only be visited at half-tide ; and another that she was 
seen to mount a broom in the last high wind, and make 
direct for Calais. 

Then he asked the fly-drivers, and they also made 
fun of him ; and then he asked the shopkeepers, but 
they, without hearing what he had to say, replied that 
they had got nothing for him. 

His money was all gone, and he could not spare 
any more clothes to sell. He was hungry, thirsty, 
and worn out, and more miserable and destitute than 
ever. 


HOW BETSEY RECEIVED HIM 137 

He sat down to rest on the step of an empty shop 
near the market-place, when a fly-driver coming by 
with his carriage dropped his horsecloth. David 
handed it up, and something good-natured in the man’s 
face encouraged him to ask if he could tell where Miss 
Trotwood lived. 

‘Trotwood,* said he. ‘ Let me see, I know the name, 
too. Old lady?’ 

‘Yes, rather,’ said David. 

‘ Pretty stiff in the back ? ’ 

David answered yes again. 

‘ Carries a bag, is gruffish, and comes down upon you 
sharp ? * 

David’s heart sank, for that is how Peggotty and his 
mother used to speak of her. 

‘I’ll tell you what,’ said the man. ‘If you go up 
there,’ pointing with his whip toward the heights, ‘ and 
keep right on till you come to some houses facing the 
sea, I think you’ll hear of her. My opinion is, she 
won’t stand anything, so here’s a penny for you.’ 

David accepted it thankfully, and bought a little loaf 
with it, and went on eating it, as he went where his 
friend directed him, till he came to the houses facing 
the sea. Then he went into a little shop close by, and 
asked the man behind the counter, who was weighing 
some rice for a young woman, if he could tell where 
Miss Trotwood lived. 

‘My mistress?’ said the young woman quickly. 
‘ What do you want with her, boy ? ’ 


DAVID COPPERFIELD 


138 

‘ I want to speak to her, if you please.* 

‘To beg of her, you mean.* 

‘No,* said David, ‘indeed.* And then he grew very 
red, and said nothing more. 

The young woman put her rice in a little basket and 
walked out of the shop, telling David he could follow 
her if he wanted to know where Miss Trotwood lived. 

David needed no second permission, and followed 
her till they came soon to a very neat little cottage 
with cheerful bow windows ; in the front of it a small 
square gravelled court or garden full of flowers, care- 
fully tended, and smelling deliciously. 

‘This is Miss Trotwood*s,* said the young woman. 
‘ Now you know, and that*s all I have to say,’ and she 
hurried into the house, leaving David at the gate look- 
ing disconsolately over the top of it towards the parlour 
window, where a great chair made him imagine that 
his aunt might be seated at that moment in awful 
state. 

His legs shook under him. His shoes were in a 
woeful condition. His hat was crushed and bent. 
His shirt and trousers, stained with heat, dew, and 
grass— and torn besides— might have frightened the 
birds from Miss Trot wood’s garden, as he stood like a 
scarecrow at the gate. His hair had not been brushed 
or combed since he left London. His skin was burnt 
brown. From head to foot he was powdered white 
with dust. David trembled as he thought of introduc- 
ing himself thus to his formidable aunt 


HOW BETSEY RECEIVED HIM 139 

At one of the top windows he suddenly saw a florid, 
pleasant-looking gentleman, with a grey head, who 
winked at him, nodded his head, laughed and went 
away. 

* This strange behaviour so discomposed him that he 
thought he would slink away ; when there came out of 
the house a lady, with her handkerchief tied over her 
cap, and a pair of gardening gloves on her hands, wear- 
ing a gardening pocket like a tollman’s apron, and 
carrying a great knife. David knew her immediately 
to be Miss Betsey, for she came stalking out of the 
house exactly as his mother had so often described her 
stalking up the garden at Blunderstone Rookery. 

‘ Go away ! ’ said Miss Betsey, shaking her head and 
making a distant chop in the air with her knife, ‘ Go 
away ! No boys here ! * 

He watched her with his heart in his mouth, as she 
marched to a corner of her garden, and stooped to dig 
up some little root there. Then David, in desperation, 
went softly in and stood beside her, and touched her 
with his finger. 

‘ If you please, ma’am,* he began. 

She started and looked up. 

* If you please. Aunt* 

‘ EH ? * exclaimed Miss Betsey in a tone of amaze- 
ment. 

‘ If you please. Aunt, I *m your nephew.* 

‘Good gracious!* said Miss Betsey. And sat flat 
down in the garden path. 


140 


DAVID COPPERFIELD 


* I am David Copperfield, of Blunderstone, in Suffolk 
— where you came, on the night when I was born, and 
saw my dear mamma. I have been very unhappy since 
she died. I have been slighted, and taught nothing, 
and thrown upon myself, and put to work not fit for 
me. It made me run away to you. I was robbed at 
first setting out, and have walked all the way, and have 
never slept in a bed since I began the journey.' Here 
he burst into a passion of crying, and cried as if his 
heart would break. 

Miss Betsey gazed at him in wonder till he began to 
cry, when she got up in a hurry, collared him, and took 
him into the parlour, and unlocking a tall press, 
brought out several bottles and poured some of the 
contents of each in his mouth. Then she laid him, still 
sobbing, on the sofa, with a shawl under his head, and 
the handkerchief from her own head under his feet, 
lest he should dirty the cover ; and then, sitting down, 
ejaculated at intervals, ‘ Mercy on us I ' letting off these 
exclamations like minute guns. 

After a time she rang the bell; ‘Janet,' said she to 
the young woman he had seen in the shop, ‘go up- 
stairs, give my compliments to Mr. Dick, and say I 
wish to speak to him.' 

Janet stared in surprise at David lying stiffly on 
the sofa, but went on her errand, while Miss Betsey 
walked up and down the room until the gentleman 
who had squinted at him from the upper window came 
in laughing. 


HOW BETSEY RECEIVED HIM 141 

‘ Mr. Dick,* said she, ‘ don’t be a fool, because nobody 
can be more discreet than you can, when you choose. 
So don’t be a fool, whatever you are.* 

The gentleman became serious immediately. 

‘Mr. Dick,’ said Miss Betsey, ‘you have heard me 
mention David Copperfield? Now don’t pretend not 
to have a memory, because I know better.’ 

‘David Copperfield?* said Mr. Dick. * David Copper- 
field ? Oh, yes, to be sure, David certainly.* 

‘Well,* said Miss Betsey, ‘this is his boy— his son. 
He would be as like his father as it’s possible to be, if 
he was not so like his mother too.* 

‘ His son ? * said Mr. Dick. ‘ David’s son ? Indeed.* 
‘Yes,* pursued Miss Trotwood, ‘and he has done a 
pretty piece of business. He has run away. And the 
question I put to you is, what shall I do with him ? * 

‘ Why, if I was you,* said Mr. Dick, considering, ‘ I 
should* — looking at David’s dusty figure — ‘I should 
wash him.’ 

‘Janet,* said Miss Betsey, ‘Mr. Dick sets us all 
right. Heat the bath.* 

Janet had gone away to get the bath ready, when 
Miss Betsey became suddenly rigid with indignation, 
and cried out, ‘Janet I Donkeys I * 

Upon which Janet came running up the stairs as if 
the house were in flames, darted out on a little piece of 
green in front, and warned off two saddle donkeys, 
lady-ridden, that had presumed to set hoof upon it; 
while Miss Betsey, rushing out of the house, seized 


DAVID COPPERFIELD 


142 

the bridle of a third donkey, carrying a child, led him 
off the green, and boxed the ears of the donkey-boy 
who had dared to bring them there. 

Whether she had any lawful right-of-way over that 
patch of green, David never learned ; but she had made 
up her mind that she had, and spent hours of her time 
in driving the donkeys off. There were three alarms 
before the bath was ready; and three times Miss 
Betsey and Janet rushed out and drove the donkeys 
away. 

The bath was a great comfort to David, for his bones 
were aching from lying out in the fields ; and when he 
had bathed. Miss Betsey and Janet robed him in a 
shirt and a pair of trousers belonging to Mr. Dick, and 
tied him up in two or three great shawls; gave him 
some broth to drink, and laid him on the sofa, where 
he soon fell asleep. And as he slept he seemed to 
dream that Miss Betsey came and bent over him, and 
put his hair from his face, and laid his head more 
comfortably, whispering, ‘Pretty fellow!* and ‘Poor 
fellow 1 ’ as she looked at him. 

David awoke at last, and they then dined off a roast 
fowl and a pudding, David sitting at the table and 
looking like a trussed fowl himself, tied up in Mr. 
Dick’s trousers and shirt, and Miss Betsey’s shawls. 

He was deeply anxious to know what Miss Trot- 
wood was going to do with him ; but she ate her dinner 
in silence, only ejaculating ‘ Mercy upon us !* when her 
eyes fell upon him. 


HOW BETSEY RECEIVED HIM 143 

Miss Betsey was a tall, hard-featured lady, but 
handsome too, although she looked so stern. Her eyes 
were very bright and her hair was grey, and she wore 
a lavender-coloured dress that was very neat, like 
everything else in the house. 

Mr. Dick’s grey head was curiously bowed, and his 
large eyes looked vacantly about, as he rattled his 
money in his pockets, as if he were very proud of it. 
David thought he looked a little mad. 

At last the cloth was removed, and some sherry put 
upon the table, of which David had a glass ; and then 
Miss Betsey made him tell her all that had befallen 
him, asking him many questions, and bidding Mr. Dick 
listen to his answers attentively. 

‘Whatever possessed that poor unfortunate Baby, 
that she must go and be married again,’ said Miss 
Betsey, when David had finished his story, ‘/ can’t 
conceive.* 

‘ Perhaps she fell in love with her second husband,’ 
suggested Mr. Dick. 

‘ Fell in love I ’ repeated Miss Betsey. ‘ What do you 
mean ? What business had she to do it ? ’ 

‘ Perhaps,* simpered Mr. Dick, after thinking a little, 
‘she did it for pleasure.* 

‘ Pleasure, indeed ! ’ said Miss Betsey. ‘ She had had 
one husband. She had got a baby— oh, there were a 
pair of babies when she gave birth to this child sitting 
here! And what more did she want? And there’s 
that woman with the Pagan name, that Peggotty — she 


144 


DAVID COPPERFIELD 


goes and gets married next. Because she has not 
seen enough of the evil attending such things, she goes 
and gets married next, as this child relates. I only 
hope,* said Miss Betsey, shaking her head, ‘that her 
husband is one of those poker husbands who abound 
in the newspapers, and will beat her well with 
one I* 

David could not bear to hear his dear old Peggotty 
made the subject of such a wish, and told Miss Betsey 
how good, and true, and faithful, and devoted she was ; 
that she loved him dearly, and that she had loved his 
mother dearly ; and that he would have gone to her for 
shelter but for her humble station, which made him 
fear that he might bring some trouble on her; and 
David, thinking of Peggotty, broke down, and laid his 
face in his hands upon the table and cried. 

‘Well, well,’ said Miss Betsey, ‘the child is right to 
stand by those who have stood by him.* She had her 
hand on his shoulder, and David, emboldened, was 
about to put his arms round her and beseech her 
protection, when Miss Betsey suddenly cried, ‘ Janet | 
Donkeys I* and away she rushed with Janet at her 
heels, and the opportunity was gone for that moment, 
for she talked of nothing but her determination to 
bring actions for trespass against all the donkey 
proprietors of Dover, till tea-time. 

After tea they sat at the window till Janet brought 
in the candles and pulled down the blinds. 

‘Now, Mr. Dick,* said Miss Betsey, looking grave. 


HOW BETSEY RECEIVED HIM 145 

‘I am going to ask you another question. Look at 
this child ! What would you do with him now ? ’ 

‘Do with David’s son?’ said Mr. Dick, looking at 
David with a puzzled face. 

‘ Ay 1* replied Miss Betsey, ‘ with David’s son.’ 

‘Oh,* said Mr. Dick. ‘Yes. Do with — I should put 
him to bed.* 

‘Janet,* said Miss Betsey triumphantly, ‘Mr. Dick 
sets us all right. If the bed is ready, we ’ll take him 
up to it* 

Janet said it was quite ready, and Miss Betsey led 
the way, with David following, and Janet in the rear. 

Half-way up the stairs Miss Betsey stopped and 
asked what that smell of burning was; and Janet 
replied that she had been burning the ragged clothes 
that David had come in to the house. 

The answer comforted David. 

The room was a pleasant one, overlooking the sea, 
on which the moon was shining brilliantly. 

He said his prayers and nestled into the snow-white 
sheets of the little white-curtained bed, and he thought 
of all the lonely places under the night sky where he 
had slept, and prayed again that he never might be 
houseless any more, and never might forget the house- 
less. 


K 


CHAPTER XVII 


MISS TROTWOOD MAKES UP HER MIND 

Miss Betsey said nothing when he went down to break- 
fast next morning, but she looked so fixedly at him 
that David was overpowered with embarrassment. 

In his confusion his knife tumbled over his fork, his 
fork tripped over his knife, he chipped bits of bacon a 
surprising height in the air, and choked himself with 
his tea, which persisted in going the wrong way instead 
of the right one, and sat blushing under Miss Betsey’s 
close scrutiny. 

‘ Hallo I * said she, after a long pause. 

David looked up and met her sharp bright glance 
respectfully. 

* I have written to him,’ said Miss Trotwood. 

* To ? ’ David stammered. 

‘To your stepfather,’ said Miss Betsey. ‘ I have sent 
him a letter that I ’ll trouble him to attend to, or he and 
I will fall out, I can tell him.’ 

‘ Does he know where I am. Aunt ? ’ asked David in 
alarm. 

‘ I have told him,' she answered with a nod. 


MISS TROTWOOD 


147 

'Shall I — be — given up to him?’ faltered the 
child. 

*I don’t know,’ said Miss Betsey. ‘We shall 
see.’ 

‘ Oh I I can’t think what I shall do,’ cried David, ‘ if I 
have to go back to Mr. Murdstone ! ’ 

‘ I don’t know anything about it,’ said Miss Betsey, 
shaking her head. ‘ I can’t say, I am sure. We shall 
see.’ 

David’s spirits sank under these words, and he 
became very downcast and heavy of heart. 

His aunt took no notice of him, but went on with her 
daily occupations, and by and by brought out a work- 
box to her table, at the open window, and sat down to 
her work. 

‘ I wish you would go upstairs,* said Miss Betsey, as 
she threaded her needle, ‘ and give my compliments to 
Mr. Dick, and I’ll be glad to know how he gets on 
with his Memorial.’ 

David went upstairs, and found Mr. Dick writing 
very fast with a quill pen, and his head almost laid on 
the paper. There was a quantity of ink in half-gallon 
jars on the table, and bundles of manuscript, and 
numbers of pens ; and David also saw a large paper 
kite in the corner. 

‘Hal’ said Mr. Dick, laying down his pen. ‘How 
goes the world ? I ’ll tell you what, I shouldn’t wish it 
to be mentioned, but it’s a — ’ here he beckoned to 
David, and put his lips close to his ear— ‘it’s a mad 


DAVID COPPERFIELD 


148 

world. Mad as Bedlam, boy I* and Mr. Dick took a 
pinch of snuff and laughed heartily. 

David delivered Miss Betsey’s message. 

‘ Well,* said Mr. Dick, ‘ my compliments to her, and 
I — I believe I have made a start. I think I have made 
a start.* He put his hand among his grey hair, and 
asked, * You have been to school ?* 

‘Yes, sir,* answered David, ‘ for a short time.* 

* Do you recollect the date,* said Mr. Dick, looking 
earnestly at him, ‘when King Charles the First had 
his head cut off?* 

David said he thought it was in the year 1649. 

‘ So the books say,* said Mr. Dick ; ‘ but I don’t see 
how that can be. Because, if it was so long ago, how 
could the people about him have made that mistake of 
putting some of the trouble out of bis head after it was 
taken off into miae ? * 

David couldn’t tell him, and was very much surprised 
at the question. He was going away, when Mr. Dick 
called his attention to the kite. ‘ I made it,* said Mr. 
Dick. ‘We’ll go and fly it, you and I.* 

* Well, child,’ said Miss Betsey, when he went down- 
stairs, ‘ and what of Mr. Dick this morning ? ’ 

David said he sent his compliments, and was getting 
on very well indeed. 

‘ What do you think of him ? * said she. 

After a little stammering, David said he thought that 
Mr. Dick was a little out of his mind. 

‘ Not a morsel,* returned Miss Betsey. ‘ If there is 


MISS TROTWOOD 


149 

anjrthing in the world that Mr. Dick is not, it ’s that. 
He has been called mad,’ added Miss Betsey. 

And after a little while she explained that he was a 
distant connection of hers, and that his near relations, 
imagining him mad, had put him into a private asylum, 
where he was not treated well ; and that after a good 
deal of squabbling about it. Miss Betsey had got him 
out, and that Mr. Dick had lived with her ever 
since. 

‘ If he likes to fly a kite sometimes,’ said Miss Betsey, 
‘ what of that ? Franklin used to fly a kite. He was a 
Quaker, or something of that sort, if I am not mistaken. 
And a Quaker flying a kite is a much more ridiculous 
object than anybody else.’ 

Her generous championship of poor Mr. Dick not 
only inspired hope in David’s young breast ; his heart 
warmed to Miss Betsey herself. He felt that though 
she was a rather eccentric old lady, she was to be 
trusted in and honoured. 

He waited anxiously for Mr. Murdstone’s reply to 
Miss Betsey, and made himself as agreeable as he 
could to his aunt and Mr. Dick ; and would have gone 
out with the latter to fly the great kite, but that he had 
no other clothes than those belonging to Mr. Dick, 
which confined him to the house. 

At last the reply from Mr. Murdstone came, and 
Miss Betsey informed him, to his terror, that Mr. 
Murdstone was coming to speak to her himself the 
next day. 


DAVID COPPERFIELD 


150 

Sitting bundled up in Mr. Dick’s clothes next day, 
flushed and heated and anxious, he waited to see the 
harsh, gloomy face of his dreaded stepfather. 

Miss Betsey sat sewing in the window, looking more 
imperious than ever, when suddenly David heard her 
give the alarm, ‘Janet ! Donkeys I ’ 

And to his consternation and amazement David 
beheld Miss Murdstone on a side-saddle ride deliber- 
ately over the sacred piece of green, and stop in front 
of the house, looking about her. 

‘ Go along with you 1 * cried Miss Betsey, shaking her 
fist at the window. ‘You have no business there. 
How dare you trespass? Go along I Oh, you bold- 
faced thing I ’ 

David cried out that it was Miss Murdstone, and 
that the gentleman walking behind was Mr. Murd- 
stone. 

‘ I don’t care who it is ! ’ cried Miss Betsey, shaking 
her head. ‘ I won’t be trespassed upon ; I won’t allow 
it. Go awayl Janet, turn him round. Lead him 
off!’ 

Janet tried to pull the donkey round by the bridle. 
Mr. Murdstone tried to lead him on ; Miss Murdstone 
struck at Janet with a parasol ; and several boys, who 
had come to see the engagement, shouted vigorously ; 
while Miss Betsey suddenly espying the donkey-boy, 
who was an old enemy of hers, rushed out on the scene 
of action, pounced on him, and dragged him, with his 
jacket over his head, into the garden, calling upon 


MISS TROTWOOD 


151 

Janet to fetch the constables that he might be taken 
on the spot ; but the donkey-boy soon dodged out of 
Miss Betsey’s grasp, and went whooping away, taking 
his donkey with him, for Miss Murdstone had dis- 
mounted while Miss Betsey held the boy, and she now 
stood waiting with her brother at the bottom of the 
steps, until Miss Betsey should be at leisure to receive 
them. 

Miss Trotwood, a little ruffled by the combat, marched 
past them into the house with great dignity, and took 
no notice of their presence, until they were announced 
by Janet 

‘ Shall I go away. Aunt ? ’ said David, trembling. 

‘ No, sir,’ said Miss Betsey. ‘ Certainly not’ And she 
pushed him into a corner, and fenced him up with a 
chair; and Mr. and Miss Murdstone entered the 
room. 

‘Oh ! ’ said Miss Betsey, * I was not aware at first to 
whom I had the pleasure of objecting. But I don’t 
allow anybody to ride over that turf.’ 

‘Your regulation is rather awkward to strangers,’ 
said Miss Murdstone. 

‘ Is it?’ said Miss Betsey. 

‘ Miss Trotwood?’ interposed Mr. Murdstone. 

‘ I beg your pardon,’ said Miss Betsey, giving him a 
keen look. ‘ You are the Mr. Murdstone who married 
the widow of my late nephew, David Copperfield.’ 

‘ I am,’ said Mr. Murdstone. 

‘ You ’ll excuse my saying. Sir,’ returned Miss Betsey, 


DAVID COPPERFIELD 


152 

‘that I think it would have been a much better and 
happier thing if you had left the poor child alone.* 

‘I so far agree with what Miss Trotwood has re- 
marked,’ said Miss Murdstone, ‘that I consider our 
lamented Clara to have been in all essential respects a 
mere child.’ 

‘ It is a comfort to you and to me, ma’am,’ returned 
Miss Betsey, ‘who are getting on in life, and are not 
likely to be made unhappy by our personal attractions, 
that nobody can say the same of us ! ’ 

‘ No doubt,’ said Miss Murdstone, not with a very 
ready assent ; while Miss Trotwood rang the bell, and 
told Janet to give her compliments to Mr. Dick and beg 
nim to come down. 

Miss Betsey sat up very stiff, frowning at the wall 
until Mr. Dick came in, biting his forefinger, and look- 
ing rather foolish. 

‘Mr. Dick,’ said Miss Betsey, introducing him. 
‘An old and intimate friend, on whose judgment 
I rely.’ 

Mr. Dick took his finger out of his mouth, and stood 
among the group with a very grave face. 

‘Miss Trotwood,’ said Mr. Murdstone, ‘on the 
receipt of your letter, I considered it an act of greater 
justice to myself to answer it in person, rather than by 
letter. This unhappy boy, who has run away from his 
friends and his occupation, has been the occasion of 
much domestic trouble, both during the lifetime of 
my late dear wife, and since. He has a sullen. 


MISS TROTWOOD 153 

rebellious spirit, a violent temper, an untractable 
disposition. And I have felt that it is right you 
should receive this grave announcement from our 
lips.’ 

‘And I beg to observe,* added Miss Murdstone, 
‘that of all the boys in the world, I believe this is 
the worst boy.* 

‘ Strong 1* said Miss Betsey shortly. ‘Well, Sir?* 
she questioned of Mr. Murdstone. 

Mr. Murdstone, with his face darkening more and 
more, explained that he had placed the boy ‘ under the 
eye of a friend, in a respectable business.* 

‘About the respectable business,* said Miss Betsey, 
catching him up sharply, ‘if he had been your own 
boy you would have put him to it, just the same, I 
suppose ? * 

‘ If he had been my brother’s own boy,* returned Miss 
Murdstone striking in, ‘his character would have been 
altogether different* 

After that Miss Betsey questioned Mr. Murdstone 
very sharply about the house and garden at Blunder- 
stone, asking how it was that the property had not 
been settled on the boy. 

‘My late wife loved her second husband, ma’am,* 
said Mr. Murdstone, ‘and trusted implicitly in him.* 

‘Your late wife. Sir, was a most unworldly, most 
unhappy, most unfortunate baby,* returned Miss Trot- 
wood, shaking her head at him. ‘That’s what she 
was. And now what have you got to say next? * 


DAVID COPPERFIELD 


154 

‘Merely this, Miss Trotwood. I am here to take 
David back ; to take him back unconditionally, to dis- 
pose of him as I think proper, and to deal with him as 
I think right.’ 

‘And what does the boy say?’ said Miss Betsey. 
‘ Are you ready to go, David ? * 

David cried out ‘No,’ and entreated her not to let 
him go, crying out that the Murdstones had never 
liked him; that they had made his mother, who 
always loved him dearly, unhappy about him ; that he 
knew that well, and Peggotty knew it well. And he 
begged and prayed his aunt to befriend and protect 
him for his father’s sake. 

‘ Mr. Dick,* said Miss Betsey, ‘ what shall 1 do with 
this child ? ’ 

‘Have him measured for a suit of clothes directly,’ 
answered Mr. Dick. 

‘Mr. Dick,’ said Miss Betsey triumphantly, ‘give 
me your hand, for your common-sense is invaluable.’ 

Shaking it cordially, she pulled David to her, and 
said to Mr. Murdstone : 

‘ You can go when you like ; I ’ll take my chance with 
the boy. If he ’s all that you say he is, at least I can do 
as much for him then as you have done. But I don’t 
believe a word of it’ 

‘ Miss Trotwood,’ said Mr. Murdstone as he rose, ‘ if 
you were a gentleman ’ 

‘Bah! Stuff and nonsense!* said Miss Betsey. 
‘ Don’t talk to me ! Do you think 1 don’t know what 


MISS TROTWOOD 155 

a woeful day it was for that soft little creature when 
you first came in her way — smirking and making 
great eyes at her as if you couldn’t say boh! to a 
goose? Oh, yes, bless us! Who so smooth and 
silky as Mr. Murdstone at first ! The poor innocent 
had never seen such a man. He was made of sweet- 
ness. He worshipped her. He doted on her boy— 
tenderly doted on him ! He was to be another father 
to him, and they were all to live together in a garden 
of roses, weren’t they! Ugh! Get along with you, 
do ! ’ said Miss Betsey. 

‘ I never heard an3rthing like this person in my life,’ 
said Miss Murdstone. 

‘ Mr. Murdstone,’ went on Miss Betsey, shaking her 
finger at him, and taking no notice whatever of Miss 
Murdstone, ‘you were a tyrant to the simple baby, and 
you broke her heart. . . . Ay, ay! you needn’t wince. 
I know it’s true without that’ 

Mr. Murdstone stood by the door with a smile on his 
face, though his black eyebrows were heavily contracted, 
and the colour left his face, and he seemed to breathe as 
if he had been running. 

‘Good day, Sir,’ said Miss Trotwood, ‘and good-bye! 
Good day to you too, ma’am,’ added Miss Betsey, turn- 
ing suddenly on Miss Murdstone. ‘ Let me see you ride 
a donkey over my green again, and as sure as you have 
a head upon your shoulders, I ’ll knock your bonnet off, 
and tread upon it ! ’ 

It was said in such a fiery way that Miss Murdstone, 


DAVID COPPERFIELD 


156 

without a word, put her arm through her brother’s, and 
walked haughtily out of the cottage. 

Then Miss Betsey’s stern face gradually i'elaxed, and 
became so pleasant that David was emboldened to clksp 
his arms around her neck and kiss and thank her over 
and over again for her protection. He then shook hands 
with Mr. Dick, who shook hands with him a number of 
times, laughing heartily. 

‘ You ’ll consider yourself guardian, jointly with me, of 
this child, Mr. Dick,’ said Miss Trotwood. 

‘I shall be delighted,’ said Mr. Dick, ‘to be the 
guardian of David’s son.’ 

‘Very good,’ returned Miss Betsey, ^that's settled. 
I have been thinking, do you know, Mr. Dick, that I 
might call him Trotwood.’ 

‘Certainly, certainly. Call him Trotwood, certainly,’ 
said Mr. Dick. ‘ David’s son Trotwood.’ 

‘Trotwood Copperfield, you mean,’ returned Miss 
Betsey. 

‘Yes, to be sure. Yes. Trotwood Copperfield,’ said 
Mr. Dick. 

Miss Betsey took so kindly to the notion that some 
ready-made clothes which were purchased for David 
that very afternoon were marked in her own hand- 
writing, in indelible ink, ‘Trotwood Copperfield.’ 

So he began his new life, in a new name, and with 
everything new about him, in a new and happy home, 
and here, I think, we must leave him. 


MISS TROTWOOD 157 

How he grew in the favour of his staunch friend 
Miss Betsey; how she sent him to a good school; 
how he went to visit Peggotty and Barkis; how he 
met Steerforth and Traddles again ; and how he grew 
up into a distinguished man, you will find out for your- 
self when you are older, and can better understand the 
beautiful story of David Copperfield^ told by the master 
himself. 


Printed by T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty 
at the Edinburgh University Press 



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